REYNOLDS HISTORICAL
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
833 01083 7455
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STORIES*^
and
LEGENDS
of
OLD BIDDEFOR
♦ ♦ ♦
Part I - 1600-17^7
The First Settlers
The Indian Wars
♦ * ♦
Prepared by
The McArthur Library
for the
City of Biddeford
1945>1946
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Special Note
In preparing ”An Introduction to
Biddeford’s History", in 19*+^? many old
tales were found that seemed to have more
than a germ of truth. Strictly speaking,
they were not history; practically speaking,
they were often the very folk-stuff of
history. They were genuinely a part of
Biddeford’s heritage from the past.
Thus this present series of "Stories
and Legends of Old Blddeford." The first
part was originally put out in a small
edition in 19^5» and has now been rearranged
into its present form. It covers the best
stories that have survived, dealing with
happenings (legendary or otherwise) up to the
close of the Indian Wars. For the first time,
all of these stories have been gathered into
one places They have been put down simply,
without literary effect or embroidery, and
they largely preserve the earliest tellings
that have come down to us. Wherever
supporting historical evidence has been found,
the facts have been given along with the story.
Part II will continue the stories through
the rich material of Colonial. Revolutionary,
and post-Revolutlonary times in Blddeford.
August, 19^6
Dane Yorke
TABLE
o f
C 0 N T £ T S
Stories before the White Men came
a. Kuloscap and the whale 1
b. ” " ” rattlesnaKe 2
c. ” ” ” Saco River giants 3-4
II . Stories after the WMte Men came
a. Captain Richard Vines and the stories
of 1630 - 1650 6-10
b. Major V/illiam Phillips and his ’’Silver Mine”,
and stories of 1660 - 1675 10-14
III . Stories of the Indian Wars, 1675 - 1749
The First Indian War « 1675 - 1678
a. Squando’s child 14-15
b. The Indians attack the Phillips’ garrison,
and burn all houses above the Pool 15-lB
The Second Indian War, 1688 - 1698
a. Governor Andros makes trouble with
the Indians 19
b. The Indian named Robin Doney 20
c. The Indians capture Pendleton Fletcher and
his sons, on Cow Island 20-21
d. The Scamman Mug, and the boy who swam the
Saco on horseback 21-22a
e. Captain John Alden and the Salem witchcraft
trials 23-.ZA
f. Colonel Pepperrell sends a barrel of rum
and a cask of wine for a ship
launching at the Pool 24-25
The Third Indian War. 1703 - 1713
a. Ebenezer Hill and wife carried to Canada
by the Indians 26-27
b. Battle at the Pool between Indians in
canoes, and white men in small ships 27-28
c. Pendleton Fletcher captured for the fourth
time, but Mary Dyer escapes 29-30
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01 -9s:
Table of Contents (Continued)
d. The Jordan garrison house, and Captain
Jordan’ s adventures with the
Indians 30-31
e. John Stackpole's adventure 31
f. The Haley house on the Pool Road, and
its Indian stories 31-33
The Fourth Indian War> 1722 - 1725 .
a. ’’Lovewell' s Fight” 33
The Fifth Indian War. 1744 . 1749 ' .
a. The Biddeford garrisons 34-35
b. The two Biddeford girls who were chased
by the Indians 36
c. Indians kill the tv/o Gordon brothers on
the Pool Road, and the ballad
written about them 36-38
d. The Indians attack the Murch farm 38
e. Parson Morrill rides fast, “as though the
De’il was after him*.” 38
f. Where the Indians used to camp in
Biddeford 39
g. An Indian wigwam 39
The Legend of the Missing Biddeford Bell 39a- c
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!• Before the White Men came
No one can say just what were the first stories told in
Biddeford. For those stories were told before America was known.
They were told by Indians, among themselves, and there was
neither writing nor books to preserve them. Most unfortunate of
all, the first white men to come to New England and Maine had no
interest in what are now called folk-stories; and even when the
last Indians were driven from the Saco Valley more than 200 years
ago, no white man hod studied their stories or ettenpted to write
them dovm. In fact it was not until 1882 (and long after our
Sokokis Indians had left here) that a gifted American scholar,
Charles Godfrey Leland, discovered a large number of old Indian
legends still surviving among the Algonquin tribes of northern
Maine and Canada. Some of these legends he found in the St,
Francis tribe, and this fact is of particular interest to us in
Biddeford, B-j cause it was to the St, Francis tribe of Canada
that the remaining Indians of the Saco Valley fled in 1725 j and
combined. These stories found by Leland are probably good
examples of the tall tales told by Indian storyteller s^ around
their camp-fires in Biddeford, before the white men came.
The most remarkable of the Wnbanaki stories (as Leland ^
called them) had to do with the adventures of a great Indian hero,
known as Kuloskap, whom the Indians believed had made Man by
shooting arrows into the bark of an ash tree . He also made all
of the animals, and he made them to fear and to serve Mtoi, It
was Kuloskap who taught Man hov; to hunt and fish, and how to
build fires and shelters and canoes. He knew all the magic words
and tricks, and with them' he fought and overcame the great giants
and sorcerers who threatened Man. But even in the most serious
stories there is alv;ays some element of comedy, because the
Indians had a keen sense of humor. The old tales ere full of
amusing touches, such as the time Kuloskap magically persuaded
a huge whale to give him a ride on its beck over the sea. The
story goes on that when they finally reached land again the whale
asked Kuloskap for a favor, saying ”Hc.st thou not such a thing as
an old pipe and some tobacco?” So Kuloskap gave the whale a
short pipe, some tobacco, and a light - and the whale swam away,
contentedly smoking, with a long plume of tobacco-smoke trailing
over him. And thus when Indians at the Pool would see a whale
’’blow” offshore, and shoot a stream of spray high in the air,
they would laugh and say that the whale was smoking Kuloskap 's
pipe.
1.
Stories and Legends:
A drawing made by a
Maine Indian, on
birch bark, showing
Kuloskap watching
the whale smoke his
pipe.
Another old story explained how the rattlesnake got its
rattles. The Indians told it this way:
’Long time ago the rattlesnakes were saucy Indians. They
were very saucy. When the great Flood was coming they
were warned about it by Kuloskap. These smart Indians
said they did not care. Kuloskap told them the water
would come over their heads. They said that would be
very wet. He told them to be good and quiet, and pray.
Then these so-bright Indians hurrahed. He said, *A great
Flood is coming’. They gave three cheers for the Flood.
He said, ’The Flood will come and drown you all'. And
then these Indirns hurrahed again, and got their rattles
(which were made of turtle-shells fastened together and
filled with pebbles) and rattled them and hrd a grand
dance. Yes, they had a great dance. The rain began to
fall, but they danced. The thunder roared, but they
shook their rattles and yelled at it.
Then Kuloskap became angry. He did not drown those
smart Indians - but he changed them into rattlesnakes.
When they see a man coming, they lift up their heads
and move them about. That’s the way snakes dance. And
they shake the rattles in their tails just as Indians
shake their rattles when they dance.”
One of the most interesting legends found by Leland,
directly mentions the Saco River. It reveals again the Indian
belief in magic, and it also shows that the Indirns played seme
2.
Stories and Legends:
sort of a game resembling our soccer fcctbell. The Indian
storyteller said solemnly:
There was a father who had three sons and a daughter. They
were mighty magicians. They were giants. They ate men,
women, and children; they did everything that was wicked
and horrible. Yet when this family was young, Kuloskap
had been their friend: he had made the father his adopted
father, the brothers his brother, the sister his sister.
But as they grew older, and he began to hear on every side
of their wickedness, he said: will go among them and
find if this be true. And if it is, they shall die. I will
not spare one of those who oppress and devour men: I do not
care who he may be . ”
This family then lived on a great sandy field near the Saco
River, and Kuloskap went there. Now the old man, the
father of the evil magicians, had only one eye and was half
gray. And Kuloskap, by magic, made himself exactly like
the father and in that form entered the Indian hut and sat
down by the old man. And the evil brothers, hearing some¬
one talking, locked in slyly and saw the newcomer who was
so like their father that they knew net which was which.
And they said to each other, ’’This is a great magician. But
he and his magic shall be tested, ere he goes, and that
bitterly. ”
So the sister took the tail of a whale and cocked it for
the stranger to eat. But as if lay before him on the
platter which was on his knees, the elder brother entered
and said rudely, ’’This is too good for a beggar like you”
- and snatched up the whale -tail and took it to his own
wigwam. Then Kuloskap spoke: ’’That which was given to me
was mine; therefore I take it back again.” And sitting
still, he singly made a wish and the meat came flying beck
through the air to the platter where it was before. And
Kuloskap ate it.
The brothers looked at each other and said, ”Indeed,
he is a great magician. But he shall be tried more ere he
goes, and that bitterly.
After he had eaten they started again. They brought in a
mighty bone, the jaw of a whale, and the eldest brother
with great fuss, and using both his arms and all his
strength, managed to bend it a little. Then he handed the
whale -jaw to Kuloskap who, just with thumb and fingers,
snapped it as easily as a pipe-stem. And the evil brothers
locked at each other again and said, ’’Truly this ig a great
magician. But he shall be tried thoroughly before he goes,
and bitterly.
So now they brought a greet pipe full of the strongest
tobacco; no man who was not a magician could have smoked it
3
Stories end Legends:
The pipe wr s passed around, every one smoked, and the brothers
( to show whr.t really tough magicians they were) proudly blew
the smoke through their nostrils while they watched for Kuloskap
to keel over. But instead, when the pipe had gone around,
j Kuloskap insisted on filling it again and this time burnt ell the
fresh tobacco to ashes at one pull, and blew all the smoke
through his nostrils at one puff.* So that test failed, and still
the evil brothers weren't satisfied. They said angrily, "This
is indeed a very great magician. Yet he shall be tried again
ere he goes, and that bitterly."
Sc they thought av^ile anJ then one said, '‘This is idle; let
us go and play ball." Txic place they decided to play on was
the large sandy plain on a bend of the Sucu Riv::r. Ana wiun tne
game began they .tried more magic - Kuloskap discovered that the
ball they kicked and rolled at him was really a hideous skull. It
seemed alive; it snapped at his heels, and hr d he been like other
men it would have bitten off his foot. But Kuloskap only laughed
and said, "So this is the game you play, eh? Good, but let us
try a livelier ball." He stepped over to a tree on the edge of
the river and broke off the end of a bough • by magic he turned
it into a skull ten times more terrible than the one the evil
brothers had used. And these brothers, those too- smart
magicians, ran wildly before the new ball as it chased them all
around the field: they were thoroughly beaten at last. Then
Kuloskap showed what he really could do. Ho stamped on the
ground and away off the waters rose suddenly and came rushing
down from the mountains and flooded the Saco Rivv-r - the whole
land rOng with the terrible roar. Then Kuloskap sang the magic
song which changes all beings, and the three brothers and their
father were turned into the chiname ss (a fish that is as long
and as large as a man) fend they went rushing headlong down on
the flooded SClco River, clear to the deep sea where they lived
ever afterwards.
Note: For a metrical version of these
and other Algonouin legends, see
the book: "Kuloskap, the Master",
by Charles Godfrey Leland and
John D. Prince. New York, 1902.
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Stories and Legends
It is a pity that no early
settler was either interested
enough, or gifted enough, to
leave us a drawing or portrait
of the early Indians fotind
here. And of course the camera
had not been invented, and was
not to be until 200 years
after the first white settlers
arrived.
But one thing is clear: the
Indians found here were not
quite the same as those later
found in the West and Far West,
Also, when the Indians of the
Saco Valley were driven out
after ”Lovewell* s Fight" in
1725 they did not go West.
Instead they fled to Canada
where they merged with a tribe
later known as the St. Francis
Indians. Thus pictures of
Western Indians are no guide to
the Indians of early Maine.
The drawing shown here is
based on careful scientific
reconstruction of Indian remains
' found in Northern New England.
It is as near as we can get today
to the appearance of the Indians
found here by Captain Vines and
the first settlers.
Early Maine Indian
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Stories and Legends:
Where the Indians were first seen
i'Mniim''
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This map was dravm in
1605 by Srinuel de
Chan^jlain, the first
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map and describe the
Indian village at the
mouth of the river.
The map covers from the
Peel almost to Ferry
Lane, It shews Hill *s
Beach to have then
been a marshy stretch.
1. Champlain *s ship
2, Indians cn shore, at Peel
3* Indian huts cn river bank
4, . Indian palisade and
corn field
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6, V/ood Island
7, Site of Camp Silis
8, Chan^lain*s spelling of the
Indian name for the river
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IHUfc4T-limi™n*--—IW—^HlW ‘ H.|-l-k»lHH-rl-»-!THv*M-
Samuel de Champlain:
Bom in Brouage , France, near the Bay of Biscay,
about 1567 > Samuel de Champlain served as a young man
in the army of Henry of Navarre. Later he became an
explorer, and in I605 he made a voyage of discovery
along the Maine coast in which he entered the Saco
River, visited and carefully described the Indians then
living here, and made the first detailed map of the
mouth of the Saco River and Biddeford Pool.
He founded Quebec in 1608. Lake Champlain, which
still bears his name, he discovered in 1609. In i6l5
he visited the Great Lakes and was the first white
explorer to describe, map, and name Lake Huron. He
named it for the Huron Indians for whom he fought
against the Iroquois.
He died in Quebec, on Christmas Day, 1635) just
five years after the founding of the first permanent
settlement here by Richard Vines.
How Champlain used
the astrolabe in his
exploring and map
making
5b
Stories and Legends:
2* After the V/hite Men came
The first white man known to have visited here was Samuel
de Champlain, of France. In July of 1605 he spent several days
with the Indians then living at the mouth of the river. But if
he heard any stories from the Indians, he did not write them down.
The first white man known to have spent any real time herc-
was Richard Vines, of England. Eleven years after Champlain,
Captain Vines sailed into the Pool and spent the winter here -
the first white man known to have wintered here. It was I616,
the year that Shakespeare died in England, and Captain Vines is
known to have visited the Indians on what is now Factory Island,
and he and his men slept in the Indian vrLgwams. But unfortunate¬
ly he never wrote a hook of his adventures and so v/e do not know
the stories he must have heard. Then, fourteen years afterwards,
(in 1630) he came again and founded the first permanent settle¬
ment here. This time he lived here for fifteen years - until
1645 when he moved to Barbadoes where he died. The home that
Vines built here (in I63O) was burned by Indians some thirty years
after he left to go to Barbadoes, and no description of it has
come down to us. But we know that it was no log hut; it was,
rather a comfortable English frame house of the period, with big
open fireplaces and a dining-room. Old deeds show that Captain
Vines took good care to have his dinner-table well supplied and
some of these documents specifically provide that he would have
a "fatt goose*’ or other fowl for special feast days. A record
of that time remarks that the people here then had " a custom
of taking Tobacco, sleeping at noon, sitting long at meals
sometimes four times in a day." And when men eat and live that
way there is nothing surer than that they relax after eating,
and gladly listen to stories.
At Captain Vines* home, therefore, we can be certain that
stories were told of the first New England pirate, named Dixy-
Bull, who raided the Maine coast for several years after Vines
established the first permanent settlement in Biddeford in 163O.
Stories were also told of another piratical character, Walter
Bagnall (w^ose nickname was **Great Watt") who was killed by an
angry Indian near the mouth of the Saco River in 1631* Bagnall *s
trading-post had been on Richmond *s Island and there, in l633>
some Massachusetts men (disappointed in searching for Dixy. Bull)
hung an Indian known as Black William - to avenge Great Watt’s
death. It is significant that neither Captain Vines nor any
other local settler was involved in this affair. The Indians
were their friends.
Over at Black Point (now Prout’s Neck) another English
gentleman, Henry Josselyn, was settled. To his comfortable
home, in I638, came his brother, John, an English lawyer, who
later wrote one of the most interesting and entertaining books
6.
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Stories and Legends:
of early America. From his book we can get an excellent idea
of the life on this coast at that time, and of the stories that
Captain Vines and his fellow-settlers must have heard. This
is John Josselyn *s account of one day's storytelling:
"June, the six and twentieth day (1639) very stormie.
Lightning and Thunder. I heard now two of the greatest and
fearfullest thunder-claps that ever were heard, I am
confident. At this time we had some neighbouring Gentlemen
in our house, who came to welcome me into the Countrey; vdiere
amongst variety of discourse they told me of a young Lyon
(not long before) kill'd aj, Piscataway by an Indian; of a
Sea-Serpent or Snake that lay quoiled up like a Cable upon
a rock at Cape -Ann: a Boat passing by with English aboard,
and two Indians, they would have shot the Serpent but the
Indians disswaded them, saying that if he were not kill'd
outright they would be all in danger of their lives.
"One Mr. Mittin related of a Triton or l/ferman which
he saw in Casco-bay; the Gentleman was a great Fouler and
used to goe out with a small Boat or Canow, and fetching a
compass about a small Island (there being many small Islands
in the Bay) for the advantage of a shot, was encountred with
^ Triton who laying his hands upon the side of the Canow had
one of them chopt off with a Hatchet by Mr. Mittin which was
in all respects like the hand of a man. The Triton
presently sunk, dying the water with his purple blood, and
was no more seen.
"The next story was told by Mr. Foxwell, now living
in the province of Maine, who having been to the Eastward
in a Shallop, as far as Cape-Ann, in his return was overtaken
by the night and, fearing to land upon the barbarous shore,
he put off a little further to Sea. About midnight they
were wakened with a loud voice from the shore calling,
'Foxwell. Foxwell. come ^ shore . ' two or three times: upon
the Sands they saw a great fire , and Men and Women, hand in
hand, dancing round about it in a ring. After an hour or two
they vanished, and as soon as the day appeared Foxwell puts
into a small Cove, it being about three quarters floud (tide),
and traces along the shore where he found the footing of
Men, Women and Children, shod with shoes; and an infinite
number of brands-ends thrown up by the water - but neither
Indian nor English could he meet v/ith on the shore, nor in
the woods.
"These with many other stories they told me, the
credit whereof I will neither impeach nor inforce, but shall
satisfie nyself (and I hope the Reader hereof) with the
saying of a wise, learned and honourable Knight, that there
are many stranger things in the world than are to be seen
between London and Stanes."
And those are the first tall stories known to have been told
on this coast, and that last sentence was John Josslyn's way of
saying, "Believe it or not."
7.
Stories and Legends:
The First Dwellings of Biddeford
The first settlers probably built
a temporary shelter like this. Such
shelters were then used in England, and
were known there as wigwams. The frame
was of poles, lashed together, covered
with thatch and sheets of bark. The
chimney was built of crossed sticks,
daubed with clay. This wigwam served
until better dwellings could be built,
as shown below.
The first settlers did not know how to build a log house. The
houses they had known in England were framed houses - houses
built of planks nailed (with wooden nails, called tree nails) to
a frame. So the settlers sawed the trees into planks, in saw
pits, as above. For 25 years after I63O, all planks were sawed
by hand in this way.
Below are shown two types of the early dwellings built here.
Roofs were thatched; chimneys were of sticks daubed with clay;
windows were covered with oiled paper, at first, until glass was
imported from England.
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Stories and Legends:
In 1642 the settlers here were excited by the visit of a man
named Darby Field who came down the Saco River with stories of
what he had found on the top of the White Mountains. With two •
Indians he had made his way from some point in New Hampshire -
being the first white man known to have visited those mountains.
He told stories of how the Indians were afraid to go too near the
mountains, in fear of evil spirits; of how he had found a pond
filled with black v/ater, and another pond with red water. He said
that there was *‘muscovy glass" (by which he meant mica) and that
pieces could be cut that were forty feet long and seven or eight
feet wide. He showed "shining stones" that he had picked up,
which he was sure were diamonds. And he probably also repeated
an Indian legend of a great gem (then called a carbuncle) of
immense size and value, that was supposed to hang from a rock
over a pond hidden deep in the mountains. He was eighteen days
making the trip, and the time was probably May of 1642.
Darby Field may have visited Captain Vines* home. At any
rate, Vines was so impressed with the story that later that
season (about August) he and another white man went from here up
the river in birch canoes. They were fifteen days going and
coming, but once more Captain Vines apparently wrote no account
of his experiences. The only report known is that given by
Governor Winthrop, of Boston, with whom Vines was friendly and
to whom he probably told the story of the trip. Crptain Vines
found that Darby Field had been a little over-excited. There
was no great carbuncle and the ’’shining stones" were not diamonds
but just pretty quartz crystals. But the Field stories led
Richard Vines to be the first man from Biddeford to visit the
White Mountains and, especially. Mount Washington which in those
days (more than 3^0 years ago) was called "the twinkling
mountains " from the way its snowclad peak danced in the haze of
the horizon when seen from this coast.
From Governor Winthrop comes another story that Richard
Vines must have heard and retold in Winter Harbor. Because
Winthrop records that Vines was visiting Boston at a time in
1643 (the next year after the White Mountain trip) when Boston
was buzzing with the tale told by a Captain Carman who had just
returned from e voyage to the Canary Islands in a small ship of
180 tons. Captain Carman had sailed from New England with a
load of clapboards to be sold in the Canaries. Just off the
island of Palma (one of the Canary group) Captain Carman said he
h-^d been attacked by a pirate ship. The Canary Islands are not
far from the haunts of the famous and fierce Algerian pirates
who were not finally crushed until American sailors (under
Stephen Decatur) did the job in 1815, more than a century and a
half after Captain Carman told his story.
This is the way Richard Vines must have heard it:
"At the Island of Palme, he (Captain Carma.n) was set
upon by a Turkish pirate of 3OO tons and 26 pieces of
ordnance (cannon) and 200 men. He fought with her three
8.
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Stories and Legends:
hours, having but 20 men and but 7 pieces of ordnance
that he could use, and his muskets were unserviceable
with rust# The Turk lay across his hawse, so as he
was forced to shoot through his own hoodings, and by
these shot killed many Turks# Then the Turk lay by his
side and boarded him with near 100 men, and cut all his
ropes, etc., but his shot having killed the captain of
the Turkish ship and broken his tiller, the Turk took in
his own ensign and fell off from him, but in such haste
as he left about 50 of his men aboard him. Then the
master (Captain Carman) and some of his men came up and
fought with those JO hand to hand, and slew so many of
them that the rest leaped overboard. The master had many
wounds on his head and body, and divers of his men were
wounded, yet but one was slain.'*
That was Captain Carman's story: that with tv/enty men and
seven small cannon and some rusty muskets, he had beaten off a
pirate ship twice' his size, three times as many cannon, and ten
times as many men - and the Captain and a few of his men had
licked fifty fierce pirates in hand to hand fighting. It was
a good story, and Captain Carman stuck to it. It undoubtedly
travelled home with Captain Vines to Winter Harbor, as Biddeford
was then called. And it probably set the folks here to telling
other stories of the sea. But no one wrote those stories down.
An English ship, such as was
sailed by Captain Richard
Vines - the founder of
Bidde ford
9.
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Captain Richard Vines:
No picture of
Richard Vines
has been founds
But this is
the way that
men of his
class were
dressed.
How he probebly dressed
His seal His signature
Vines carried his seal engraved on a finger ring.
The design on the seal is known as a Merchant’s
Mark - or ’’Mystery Mark”, because the exact
meaning is not known. The design is a form of the
cross, and its use by European merchants has been
traced back to the Crusades.
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4
.
Stories and Legends:
About two years after hearing that pirate sea story, Richard
Vines gave up his home here, going to the island of Barbados
in the West Indies where he raised cotton, sugar and tobacco -
and where he died in 1651. vrfhile he lived here his principal
business seems to have been as a trader in lumber and beaver skins
and he travelled a good deal - to the north of Maine on trading
voyages, and to Boston to sell the goods he had obtained in
trading with the northern Indians and with the French settlement
in Acadie s the same Acadie or Acadia that about a hundred years
later was the home of Evangeline# It is interesting that the
title of Captain which Richard Vines bore did not mean that he
was a sailor# In those days a very sharp distinction was made
between the title of “master” (what we would now call a ship *s
captain) and that of “captain# “ Captain then meant exclusively
a military man, and the title was given only to soldiers and
explorers* As soldier, explorer and fur- trader, Richard Vines
could undoubtedly have told many stories that today we would be
glad to hear# But he v/as • not a boaster nor a braggart, and in
his modesty never saw fit to write of his experiences# He did
things, but he didn’t talk about them# He was probably the most
influential man in the early settlement here , and the most
respected#
It was not until fifteen years after Vines left that another
man came here to occupy as high a position in the community# This
was William Phillips who in 1659 purchased 'the land here that had
formerly been owned by Richard Vines# The next year, I66O,
Phillips moved here from Boston and built his home on the hill
near the present Peirson's Lane# He was a mrn of wealth; his
home was undoubtedly large and well-built for th? t time# He
bought land from the Indians until he owned almost all of the
territory now covered by Sanford, Alfred, Waterborough, Hollis
and Limington, as well as all of Biddeford above Moore *s Brook#
He was a major of militia; his daughter Elizabeth married Captain
John Alden (who was the son of the famous John Aiden and Priscilla
in the old Miles Standish story) and Captain John built a sawmill
for Major Phillips on the riverbank where the Pepper ell Mills now
stand. If Captain John Aiden did not live here, he certainly
often visited here at the Phillips* home# And it is a very fair
assumption that the life at the Phillips* home was very similar
to the life at the Josselyn home at Black Point (now Sc^rboro)
of which we have an interesting record written by John Josselyn.
Josselyn came back to Maine from England in I663, three
years after Major Phillips established his home here. This time
Josselyn stayed eight years and his report of his experiences
makes an interesting and amusing picture of life on this coast
after the settlement was well established# It proves once more
how very different (and how much more enjoyable; the life here
was from that of the extreme Puritans of Massachusetts Bay# For
instance, Josselyn describes a winter pastime:
“In the depth of winter they (the settlers) lay a
sledg-load of Cods-herds on the other side of a paled fence
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atories and Legends:
(a picket fence) when the moon shines. And about nine or
ten of the clock the Foxes come to it, sometimes two or three
or half a dozen or more; these they shoot, and by the time
they have cased (skinned) them, there will be as many foxes
as before. So they continue shooting and killing ... Foxes
as long as the moon shine th: I have known half a score
kill *d in one night. **
Wolves were hunted here then. The first livestock was
largely goats on which the wolves preyed heavily. For that
reason wolves were hunted down without mercy. “In 1664,“
says Josselyn, **we foxand a wolf asleep in a small dry swenp
under an Oak; a great mastiff which we had with us seized
upon him and held him till we had put a rope about his neck,
by which we brought him home , and tying him to a stake we
baited (teased) him with smaller Dogs and had excellent
sport till his hinder-leg being (finally) broken, they
knockt out his brains.
“Sometime before this we had an excellent course (race)
after a single wolf upon the hard sand by the seaside at
low water for a mile or two. At last we lost our dogs, it
being twilight, and went beyond them, for a mastiff had
seized upon the wolf (which had) gotten into the sea, and
there held him till one went in and led him out - the
mastiff keeping her hold till they had tied his (the wolf *s)
legs, and so we carried him home like a Calf, upon a staff
between two men. “ Afterwards they killed the wolf, and
then Josselyn made a comment which could only have come to
him from some goodwife on this coast: “The Fangs of a wolf,“
said Josselyn, “hung about children's necks, keep them from
frightning, and are very good to rub their gums with when
they are breeding (cutting) of teeth. “
Another story of Josselyn*s of this same time, gives another
se of the life here. He says that one Fall evening
‘certain Indians coming to our house clad in Deerskin Coats,
desired leave to lodge all night in our kitchen, it being
a very rainy season. “ Given permission, the Indians slept
that night on the kitchen floor - some in the middle and
others under the long kitchen table. When the Josselyns
arose next morning the Indians had gone, and the chickens
were then called from the yard into the kitchen because,
as Josselyn naively explains, “they had their breakfast
usually in cold weather in the kitchen.” So the corn for
the chickens was thrown under the kitchen table to keep
the chickens out of the way of the busy servants in the
kitchen. And everything went on a.s usual in the Josselyn
home that morning until the chickens began to act queenly.
“In the afternoon they began to heng the wing; in the night
the sickest dropt dead from the perch, and the next day
most of them died. We could not guess at the cause but
thought the Indians had either bewitched or poisoned them."
But finally it was discovered that hairs shed by the Indians *
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Stories and Legends:
’’Deerskin coats” were to blame. The chickens gobbling up
the corn under the kitchen table had taken the loose hairs
along with it. The crops of the dead chickens had ”as much
Deers hair as Corn; they that picked up none of the hair,
lived and did well.”
And that gives a striking picture of life in the kitchen
of a wealthy settler, a magistrate and deputy governor of Maine,
whose home was no pioneer log hut but rather a comfortable
clapboarded house large enough to be then called a mansion
anywhere in New England# Incidentally John Josselyn gives
another glimpse of the give-and-take relations betv/een the early
settlers and the Indians. The Indians learned much from the
white men; the white men also learned much from the Indians -
as in this magical recipe for what is still a great garden pest
in Maine. Says Josselyn:
’’There is also a dark worm of the bigness of an Oaten-
straw, and an inch long, that in the spring lye at the root
of Corn and Garden plants all day, and in the night creep
out and devour them. These in some years destroy abundance
of Indian Corn and Garden plants, and they have but one way
to be rid of them which the English have learnt of the
Indians; and because it is somewhat strange I shall tell
you how it is. They go into a field or garden with a birch
dish, and spudling the earth about the roots, for they lye
not deep, they gather their dish full which may contain
about a quart or three pints (of worms). Then they carrie
the dish into the Sea, and within a day or two if you go
into your field you may look your eyes out sooner than find
any of them.”
And that was the Indian cure for cutworms, used by the early
settlers of Biddeford three centuries ago.*
No picture exists of the house that Major v^illiam Phillips
built on what is now Pierson’s Lane. But it is very probable
that it resembled this house, built in another Nev/ England
settlement at the very same time. The overhanging second
floor was not the mark of a fort or garrison house, but was an
architectural style common in English houses, and brought to this
country from England by the early settlers.
12.
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Stories and Legends:
is. The Indian Wars
Duri^ the time of Captain Richard Vines there was never any
trouble with the Indians of the Saco Valley, although there was
a report in Boston in 1634 that a white man from here had been
killed by Indians while trading with them. But who that white
man was, is not known - and Boston heard many such stories that
proved untrue. As Governor Winthrop once wrote: "Indeed, it was
so usual to have false news brought from all parts, that we were
very doubtful of the most probable reports." Ferhaps that
remark applies to another Boston report, of 1642, as well, which
report or rumor ran that Indians had been robbing the houses of
the white men here and had "taken away their powder and guns."
On the whole it is very clear that for forty-five years after
the settlement was founded by Vines, there was absolute peace
with the Indians. Which is in bright contrast to the fact that
the partner of Vines, John Oldham, was killed by Indians in
Rhode Island in 1636 and that Massachusetts and Connecticut had
a bloody Indian war (the Pequot War) in 1637*
The good relations with the Indians, established by Vines,
continued for fifteen years after Major William Phillips came.
In fact Phillips seems to have gone out of his way to be friendly.
Although the settlement had already been established for a full
generation, Phillips was careful to May of 1664 to purchase from
an Indian chief all title that was claimed by the Indians to the
land between the Saco and Kennebunk rivers, and stretching from
the sea to Salmon Falls • a distance of twenty miles. In the
deed still on record at Alfred, the Indian chief describes himself
as "Mogg Hegone of Sacoe River, sunn (son) and heyre (heir) to
Walter Higgon, Sagamore of the sc.yd River but now deceased." This
was the famous Mogg whom the poet Whittier later wrote about in
his story-poem called "Mogg Megone" (though he took great
liberties with actual history in his writing) and the same chief
for whom the great rock at tlie foot of Cataract Falls in Saco
was long known as '‘the rock of Mogg Megone." Major Phillips
dealt with other Indians also. From a chief named Fluellen he
bought (in I661) a piece of land eight miles square (and covering
some 38,000 acres) taking in the present Sanford, Alfred and
Waterborough - a district once known as Phillipstown. From
still another Indian named Hobinowill he bought the land from
Salmon Falls to the Ossippee River now occupied by parts of
Hollis and Limingtcn- the latter town, by the way, being long
known as Phillip sburg. Major Phillips also bought what he
thought was a silver mine when, in l6o4, he purchased frcm an
Indian chief named Ifeeksombe three rocky hills on the west side
of the Saco River near what were called the "groat falls" which
in turn were thirty miles or more above the falls at Biddeford.
This Indian named Meeksombe was better known by the white men as
Captain Sunday, though why he was called that is net known, and
13.
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Stories and Legends:
the three rocky hills were known as Sunday’s Rocks for a full
hundred years# An old dociiment describes them as ''chiefly white
but mixed with Izinglass” and it was the shining mica or isinglass
that made the men of Major Phillips’ day think there was silver
"in them thar hills." In fact, so sure was Major Phillips that
he sold portions of his "silver mine" to friends in Boston# And
the McArthur Library has a copy of a deed made in 1673 iri which
a "one sixteenth Part of the Silver Mines" was sold by Phillips
with "the consent of Bridget his Wife#" The old deed begins
solemnly:
"To all Christian People to whom this present Deed
of Sale shall come, Major William Phillips of
Winter Harbor in the Province of Mayne in New England
in America, sendeth Greeting in our Lord God everlasting.
It is the first recorded mining speculation in Biddeford
history. But before the "mine" could be worked (and found to have
no silver) an Indian war had struck.
This war, known to history as King Philip’s War, began in
Massachusetts in June of 1675. At first the Indians here refused
to join the Massachusetts Indians in attacking the white men. And
it was not until September of that year, that trouble began here#
One of Biddeford ’s oldest legends explains that trouble# It is
the legend of Squando’s Curse.
Squando is one of the most tantalizing figures in our
Indian history# He is described as "the Sagamore (or Chief) of
the Saco Indians" and is said to have been a frequent visitor in
the homes of the v/hite men here# He is also said to have been a
grave and dignified man and among the Indians he was regarded as
a powerful "powow" or magioian. Just when he became chief of his
tribe is not known but it could not have been long before the
outbreak of the war. One significant thing is that in ail the
land purchases made by Major Phillips of the Indians between l66C
and 1670, the name of Squando does not appear. In the war itself
he appears as the most cruel and savage of the Indian leaders, and
yet in at lerst one instance he showed a very kindly disposition
toward the white men. In this instance Squando came across a
young white girl who had been captured by Indians farther north
in Maine, and personally took the girl from the Indians and
delivered her safe and unharmed to the nearest white settlement.
He appears abruptly in our history, and disappears just as
abruptly. And no white man of the time seems to have known him
well enough, or been sufficiently interested, to really study him#
All accounts agree that he was suddenly changed from friendship
to bitter enemity by something that happened on the Saco River in
the spring or summer of 1675* The place of the happening must
have been just below Factory Island, which was then known as
Indian Island because it was an Indian camping ground each spring
and summer. The first version of the happening appeared in a
book published in Boston in 1677 ~ so that the legend is probably
the oldest Biddeford legend in print# This is the way it was
told in 1677 1 barely two years after the happening:
14.
Stories and Legends:
’^The chief actor, or rather the beginner of all the
mischiefs, is one Squando, the Sagamore of Saco Indians,
whose squaw, as was said, was abused by a rude and indiscreet
act of some English seamen, the last summer, 1675 » who
either overset the canoe wherein the said squaw and her
child were sailing in a river thereabouts, or else to try
whether the children of the Indians (as they had heard)
could swim as naturally as any other creature, wittingly
cast her child into the water. But the squaw immediately
diving into the water after it, fetched it up from the
bottom of the river - yet it failing out within a while after
(that) the said child died (which it might have done if no
such affront had been offered) the said Squando, father of
the child, hath been so provoked thereat that he hath ever
since set himself to do all the mischief he can to the
English in those parts, and was never as yet since that time
truly willing to be reconciled, although he is said to have
sent home some that v/ere taken captive the last year.”
It is very likely that there was some such happening,
because it was an ftarly belief with the white men that Indians
swam as naturally as animals, and without being t.ught. John
Josselyn, in fact, makes the direct statement that ”they (the
Indians) can swim naturally, striking their pawes under their
throat like a dog, and not spreading their ^rms as we do.” By
which he meant, of course, thr t the Indians swam ”doggy fashion”
while the white men used the breast stroke. Such incidents
also m^y have happened elsewhere, for a similar story of this
same war is a part of the folklore of New Hanqpshire and told in
connection with the legends of the Fiscataqua River. But the
Biddeford legend has one feature not shared by the New Hampshire
story. V/hich is that Squando not only began a war, but as a
great powow or magician he laid a curse on the Saco River that
each year the River would claim three white lives (by drowning)
until all the white men were driven from the banks of the Saco
River. And people still speak each summer of the Saco 's three
yearly drownings, and watch to see if the curse hclcbtrue.
But whatever the cause that made the local Indians and
Squando join in King Philip’s war, the fact remfins that there
had been enough warning signs that summer to let Major Phillips
fortify his home. The probrble appearance of his heme before
the war, is shewn on page 12. In fortifying it, he most probably
erected a palisade of stout planks or logs around it, with the
corners built cut into what were called ”flankers”, sc that the
Indians could not creep up under the palisade and take shelter.
Across the river, near where the railrcrd crosses Common
street in Saco, stood the home of John Bonythen and to that home
there came one day a friendly Indian who warned Captain John that
strange Indians had come from the we st and were persuading the
local Indians to an attack. Evidently Major Phillips had made
a thorough job of fortifying his house , because Bonython left his
15.
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tladi %3tiw ao«/3q viodi bdldl*ila tXlxi^iol.Ai fltlwa a^o (aasital
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ladi ,Kavld ooaa adl ao aoAvo a blaX ad aaloll^aA Xo vowoq l.'^an
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ooad adl to adoad adl AoXt aavixb antav aAi alldA Afl IXa Xllao
tndl 0*0906 All to XAi&M doof dotqa XXllo aXqoaq bnk .xavld
•ATxlibX^ sawo adl tl 030 ol dollar bno «abolnvoxb
t
boo Mzitnl iMDoX adj abAi ladi tou 'O odl tavolado loa
nadi I Ail aal ^an loot All .xoa a'qlXldf snIJ al al. ^ ^boisypa
aqliXIdX xoLdl laX ol xasaoi ladi aoiia bnloxoA dsuoao avad bad
notad caoa aid to aoa^xaaqqo aid doxq tdT *01134 aid ^llxot
Xldadoxq laoA ad fll sahttllxot al •SIX aB'!q no ov^da al 9%jm adl
odi dlhr «|| bflu/jxa ab:>X xo adaaXq li/.la to abcalX^q a baloaxa
adl lAfl oa t"ax9dn.iXt" baXxaa nm lado olal l«o IxXixf aXArtoa
•xaIXada adal baa abaeIXaq adl xabou gc/ qaaxa loa biiioa aa'^lbaX
aAoaoS aaaaoxo b‘?:>xXlo*i adl axada xasn txavix adl aaoxoA
Ai.d Icdl ol bna a^d^xnoS odoV tw di^d adl boola t oaab ol laaxla
ladi xidoU itlalqaO baoxav odw »lbal xX^^tt a xab aao aAoa axadi
adl s^lbauaxaa axAr bna la at adl aqtt aAoo bdit aa^lbnl tbaa^la
abiA bad aqlXxIdX xotad Via ablvt •dam a no ol aaalbaX I^aoX
' aid ItaX aodixooH aaiiaaadt aaaod aid to doL xlbaoxodl s
Stories and Legends:
own home at once (though he was supposed to have fortified
it) and crossed the river with his family to take shelter
with Major Phillips. It was well he did, because just a
day or two later - on a Saturday morning, September l8th,
1675 - the people in the Phillips* house saw flames and
smoke shoot up on the other side of the river and knew then
that the Indians had come and had set fire to the Bonython
house. From the hill on Peirson*s Lane they would have
had an excellent view, and it was a valuable warning. For
other Indians had gotten undetected ’across the river and
within half an hour would have taken the Phillips* home by
surprise if it had not been for the warning given by the
burning Bonython house. This is the way the story of the
attack was told within a year after it occurred. It appears
in the same book with the Squcndo story, printed in Boston
in 1677.
”Upon the eighteenth of September, about 11 0 * clock
those at Major Phillips’ garrison saw Capt. Bonython *s
house on fire, which by the good providence of God was
to them as the firing a beacon giving them notice to
look to themselves, their enemies being new come 4
otherwise they might, to their great disadvantege , have
been too suddenly surprised. For within half an hour
after, they (the Indians) were upon them.
•'A sentinel placed in a chamber (on the second
floor) gave notice that he saw an Indian by the
fence near a cornfield. Major Phillips, not willing to
believe till he might see with his own eyes, ran hastily
upstairs, and another of his men coming after him cried,
’*Major, what do you mean? Do you intend to be killed?**
at which words he (the Major) turned from the window
out of which he was locking (and probably leaning) just
as a bullet struck him on the shoulder, grazing it but
without breaking the bone. The Indians upon the shot,
thinking he he'd been slain, gave a great shout.
With the shout the Indians began to show themselves all
around the house, and the white men saw that they were
entirely surrounded. ’’Whereupon they instantly fired on the
enemy from all quarters, and from the flankers of the
fortification, so as they wounded the Captain of the Indians
who, presently leaving the assault, retired three or four
miles from the place where he soon after died (as the white
men later learned).** In the house itself ’’one of the best
men was soon after disabled from any further service, by a
wound he received in one of the vollies made by the
assailants; but that did not in the least daunt the rest of
the defenders, who continued still to fire upon the enemy.
This dispute lasted about an hour, after which the enemy
dispairing to take the house by assault, thought upon a
device how to burn it. **
16.
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a Aoqo XdBiiodX tXXoaaaa x^ aaiMd adX adoX oX BdX^laqaXb
*«XX erwd aX vod aaXaab
Stories and Legends
It is interesting to recall how desperate must have fseemed
the situation just then# There were fifty people crowded into
the Phillips* home but only ten were ’’able hands” and another
five were so aged or so young that their help was very limited.
And outside, and all around, were nearly one hundred Indians -
with no other white men nearer than those at the Pool, and those
not daring to leave the Pool for fear of Indian ambush. The
Indians, incidentally, must have been very sure of themselves
and very well acquainted with the isolation of the defenders.
Major Phillips* had evidently been building a little separate
settlement around the Peirson Lane district for the old book
records that the Indians* next step v;as to burn ’’the house of
one of his tenants,” and then his sawmill (that h£:d been built
and operated by his son-in-law. Captain John -^Iden) which stood
somewhere on the riverbank nearby. In setting these fires
the Indians v^rore ’’hoping to draw them ( the white men) out of
the garrison to put out the fire, but missing their purpose in
thft, they called out: *You English cov/ardly dogs, come out
and quench the fire.*” All that Srturday afternoon the Indians
continued their shooting and taunting. ”The besieged hoped for
relief from the (other) towns but none came, the l/Iajor ,
still encouraging his men to hold out which they manfully did
all that night, when they v/ere alarmed almost every half hour.
Betweenwhile s they could hear their axes and other instruments,
knocking about the mills. Those within the house conceived they
(the Indians) were preparing some engine wherewith to burn
the house, which really was the case. About four o’clock in the
morning, at the sitting of the mcon, he (the Major) saw a cart
with four wheels, having a barricade built in the fore part to
keep off shot, and filled v/ith combustible matter (birch rinds,
straw, powder) and v/ith poles 20 feet long ready to fire the
house. He ( the Major) bid them let the Indians drive it within
pistol shot, before they made any shot against them; his men
were a little disccurrged at the sight of this engine, but he
bid them be of good courage and use means, putting their trust
in God who he was confident would relieve them.”
The Indians apparently had built the cart somewhere in the
vicinity of the present Liberty Square. The white men watched
while the Indians begrn to. push the cart nearer, sheltered by
the barricade or shield they hod built on the front of the cart.
A small brock then ran down the hill near the Phillips’ house
and the cart in crossing it, made unwieldy by the barricade,
caught one wheel in the mud and twisted sideways so that the
Indians behind the cart and shield were exposed. Instantly the
white men ’’fired upon them out of the right flanker, and having
so fair a shot upon them, and not being above pistol shot from
the place, they killed 6 of the enemy and wounded 15 - as they
found afterwards.” This mishap discouraged the Indians and
”at sunrise those within the house espied 40 of them marching
away, but how many more were in the company they could not tell.”
After it seemed certain that the Indians had gone. Major •
17
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Stories and Legends
Phillips sent a message to the settlers at Winter Harbor, asking
for help. But Sunday passed, and Monday, and no help came. The
powder and shot for the heavy muskets was almost exhausted, and
the people in the garrison told Major Phillips that they would
not stay any longer. So on Tuesday morning, all the fifty
people (of whom about fifteen were men and boys) made their way
cautiously down to the Pool. And about two weeks later, the
Indians reappeared and burned all houses on both sides of the
River down to its mouth. Only the houses at Winter Harbor were
left.
This is the most vivid and detailed story of Biddeford *s
Indian history. After the burning of their homes. Major Phillips
and Captain John Bonython went to Massachusetts - Captain John
to Marblehead, and the Major to Boston. It is very probable that
the story printed in Boston in 1677 (and vi^hich has been quoted
here) was told by Major Phillips himself. None of the white'
men were killed, and none fatally wounded. Major Phillips'
v/ound, at the beginning of the fight, proved not dangerous. But
he lost his home, his mill, and the other buildings on his
development. He never returned here.
It is interesting that this first Indian war, v/hich
lasted for three years 11675-1^78) > was the only war directly
between the Indians and the early settlers. All the later
wars were part of the European feuds between England and France.
And the forces on both sides, in those later wrrs, were mrde up
alike of Indians and white men, fighting against other Indians
joined with other white men.
This first war was also the only Indian war th^t was
concluded by a treaty in which the white settlers agreed to
pay tribute to the Indians. In this case, when the treaty was
signed in 1678 at Casco (now Portland) the white settlers along
the coast, from Kittery to the Kennebec, agreed to pay the
Indians "one peck of corn annually for each family, by way of
acknowledgement to the Indians for the possession of their lands."
Squando was one of the leaching Indian sagamores, and maybe it was
his contriving that Major Phillips was ordered to pay more then
any one else - the Major having to pay a bushel of com, where
others paid only a peck.
This is probably the type of early musket
used by Major Phillips and his men in the
battle with the Indians in 1675* It was
loaded through the muzzle.
18.
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Stories and Legends:
After the peace treaty of 1678 there was a period of about
ten years before the next war broke out - the war called ’’King
William’s War” after William of Orange who was king of England
at the time. But it was an uneasy peace. The town records were
not kept between 167? and I68O; when they began again it was
because enough people had come back and begun to build homes and
mills again. There was an Indian disturbance at V/ells in I68I5
in 1685 there was a report in New Hampshire that the Indians on
the Saco were making trouble and an old letter reveals how closely
the Indians were watched:
’’They (the Indians) having lately about Sacoe affronted
our English inhabitants there by threatening of themi
as also killinge their doggs: but more particularly
in that on Friday and Lord’s last they have
gathered all their corn, and are removed both pack
and packidge. A word to the wise is enough.”
This was in early August, of 1685, and the fact that the Indians
should harvest their corn so early, and move away, certainly
looked ominous# But the trouble seems to have blown over, and
for three years more there was peace.
And when the trouble did come, it was Mc.ssachuse tts that
made it - not Maine. Governor Andros, of Boston, in I688, a
bitterly hated man, went out of his way to provoke trouble by
plundering and destroying the trading post on the Penobscot
River that was the property of Baron de ot. Cestine who had.
married the daughter of the leading Indian chief in northern
Maine. Governor Andros was soon removed but the people of Ms;ine
were left to pay the price of the enemity he had stirred up. The
Indian chief, father-in-law of the Baron, took up the quarrel; it
spread to other tribes. The Indians here complained that the
annual tribute of com, provided for in the treaty of 1678, was
not being paid. They also said that the fishing of the white
men in the Saco River - in which they used large nets and seines -
was disturbing their fishing. And the owner of a sawnill that
stood at Cataract Falls in Saco, Mr. Benjamin Blackman, (the
falls, incidentally, were long known as Blackman’s Falls) made
the mistake of ordering soldiers to arrest here some ’’sixteen or
twenty Indians who had been most active in the former war” - on
suspicion that they were planning another outbreak. T’hat autumn
two families (named Barrow and Bussy) living near '<1/ inter Harbor,
were cut off by the Indians and carried away as captives. And
for ten years thereafter, there was constant trouble and danger.
In 1689 an Indirn attack occurred on a Sunday in April, but
nothing is known of the details. A few months Ic.ter four local
young men were ambushed and killed by the Indians, and a party
of twenty-four men hunting for the bodies were caught in a swanp
by the Indians and had six killed. In the next year (169O) came
the bloody attack at Berwick and a fort was captured at Falmouth
(Portland), which sc alarmed the people at Cape Elizabeth, and
SCr'rboro, thet they fled to the Saco River for safety. In
September of thrt year a party of soldiers saw smoke from a
burning house on the east bank of the river, and going to see
19
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•ex
Stories end Legends:
what caused it they surprised Indians on the opposite bank. Three
Indians were found on the same side with the soldiers; they
tried to escape across the river in a canoe, and one (who stood
up so he could paddle better) was killed by a shot and in falling
broke the canoe so that all three Indians perished - to the
cheers of the soldiers* Up at the Falls, probably on what is
now Factory Island, there was a noted Indian known as Robin
Doney (and commonly called ’’Old Doney") who had a white man as
prisoner. Hearing the guns, Doney made his prisoner get in a
canoe and paddled down river - probably thinking he was going to
get still another prisoner. But when he saw the soldiers. Old
Doney drove his canoe hard against the opposite bank, and as, it
grounded he gave one big leap thrt carried him clear over the
head of the white man (who was sitting in the canoe’s bow)-and
when he landed on shore Old Doney certainly didn't waste time
getting under cover, and back with the other Indians. The one
happy man in the whole proceedings was the white man whom Doney
left behind in the canoe, and who thus escaped captivity. It
is interesting to know that four, years later (in August, 1694-)
Old Doney himself was taken prisoner at the stone fort that in
the meantime had been built on the river bank just about where
the power plant of the Pepperell Mills now stands. And he
couldn't jump over the walls of that fort.
There was constant ambush, and small raids, but no big
attack in this war like that on the Phillips* home in the other
war. Two soldiers from the stone fort were killed one yetr, and
the next year five more wore killed because in going on a trip
outside the fort they made the mistake of returning the same way,
and so were ambushed. The wise old Indian-fighters made it a rule
never to go back by the same way they came - for it made it too
easy for the Indians to simply wait for their return and catch
them in an ambush.
But out of this long and tiresome war came two stories
often told in after times. The first of these stories was told
in Boston at the time, by the famous Puritan, Cotton Mother.
Three scldiers from the stone fort had been sent to Cow Island
(which was then much larger and more impertrnt than now) to cut
firewood for the use of the fort. As a guard , a Lieutenant
Pendleton Fletcher (Fletcher’s Keck, at the Pool, still bears
his name) was sent with his two sons to keep an eye out for
Indians. Unfortunately, however, the three get mere interested
in shooting birds than in watching - with the result that the
Indians were able to kill the soldiers cutting wood, and to
capture the three Fletchers. Cotton Mather tells the rest of the
story in this way:
’’The Indians carrying these three captives down the
river in one of their canoes, Lieut. Larrabee (who was
abroad with a scout) waylaid them, and firing on the
foremost of the canoes that had three men (Indians) in it,
they all three fell and sank in the river of death. Several
were killed aboard the other ernoes, and the rest ran their
20.
Stories and Legends:
canoes ashore and escaped on the other side of the river.
One of the Fletchers, when all the Indians with him were
killed, was delivered out of the hands which had made a
prisoner of him, though his poor father afterwards died
among them.*'
It is in this war that a new note is evident - the Indians
were paying more attention to taking prisoners than they were
to killing. They had discovered that prisoners were more valuable
than scalps. Kind-hearted people in Canada, seeing the forlorn
prisoners with the Indians, had begun to buy their freedom. Others
not so kind-hearted, bought them as servants or - if they thought
the frmily had money - as a speculation against a possible ransom.
As domestic servants, young girls and boys were especially prized
and were in constant danger of being carried off. Some pathetic
notes come out of these old times, like the will of the man
living in York who in 1695 made this provision in his will:
"Item: Unto my Dear Daughter now in Captivity with the
Indians, Dorothy Milbury, I will and give the sum of
five pounds, In Case she returns by Gods good Providence
from Captivity, but not 'till then to be paid; which
Legacy I intend not payable by my son at all if she
neuer return."
This new practice and value in captives explains the remarkable
case of the son of the Lieutenant Pendleton Fletcher who escaped
from the Indians. The Lieutenant was carried off to Cc.nada where
he died within two years, and where apparently the other son
remrined. But the one who escaped (who was also named
Pendleton Fletcher) made almost a habit of being captured. Just
twelve years later (in 1710, and during the third Indian war)
he was captured at inter Harbor and the statement was then made
that it was the fourth time he had been an Indian prisoner, and
either escaped or been ransomed.
This note of taking captives is apparent In the famous
story of the Scamman Mug. The story, as told in I83O, by the
grf nddaughter of the boy who had carried the mug (and who had
heard the boy - when her grandfather- tell the story himself)
runs as follows:
"When Samuel Scamman was about ten years old, as his
granddaughter has often heard him relate, he was sent
one day by his mother with a mug of beer to his
father and brother, who were at work cn a piece of
marsh in the neighborhood of the lower ferry. He
had not gone far from the house when he discovered a
number of Indians at a distance , and immediately ran
back to inform his mother. He regained the house,
and wished to fasten the doors and windows but his
mother prevented, saying that the Indians would
certainly kill them if he did. They soon came into
the house and asked the good woman where her
21.
Stories and Legends:
sanap (husband) wa s* She refused to inform them, when
they threatened to carry her off alone: hut they
promised, if she would discover where he was, to take
them together without harm. She then told them. After
destroying much of the furniture in the house, breaking
many articles on a flat stone by the door, and emptying
the feather beds to secure the sacks, they went away
with the prisoners toward the marsh where they succeeded
in capturing Mr. Scamman and his other son. A boy
named Robinson, who had been for the team, as he was
returning perceived the savages in time to make his
escape. Mounting a horse, with only his garters for a
bridle, he rode up to what is now cflled Gray’s Point,
swam the horse to Cow Island, and leaving him there
swam to the opposite shore and reached the fort in
safety.
He found only a few old men and women in possession
of the place. The guns were immediately fired to alarm
the soldiers belonging to the fort, who were at work
some distance off. The women in the meantime put on
men’s clothes ani showed themselves about .the fort so
that they could be seen by the Indians who had come up
to the opposite island (Factory Island). Deceived by
the women’s strategem (supposing the fort to be well
manned, as they afterwards acknowledged) the Indians
did not venture an attack but drew off with a number
of prisoners beside Scamman and his family.
As the peace took place soon after, the prisoners
were all restored, having been probably about one year
in captivity. Mr. Scamman on his return found his
house in precisely the condition in which it had been
left. Even the mug of beer, which Samuel (the ten-year-
old boy) had placed on the dresser, was found remaining
there. The mug is still in existence. It is a
handsome article, of brown ware, v/ith the figure and
name of King William stamped upon it.”
That story v/as written in I83O. The mug had probably been
made about I69O. The Scamman home was on the Saco side of the
river, about opposite Ferry Lone. And Gray’s Point, where the
Robinson boy forced his horse (which he rode bareback) to swim
the river, is the point of land on the Saco side just about
opposite George street in Biddeford. The incident took place
in 1698 - nearly two hundred and fifty years ago*
Peace was signed in January, 1699* But just four years
later a third war broke out (colled Queen Anne ’s V/ar, after the
English Queen Anne) that lasted another ten years - or until
1713-
22
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•xrfx
The Stone Fort
This is the fort to which the Robinson boy rode
and swam, to carry the alarm. On its walls the
women showed themselves, dressed in men’s clothes, to
deceive the Indians. The drawing was made by an
English military engineer in l699> and not more than
two years after the Indians carried off the Scammans.
The fort was built in l693» was the only fort
here until after 1700. It stood on the high bank of
the river just above where the Main Street bridge is
now, and about where the Fepperell power plant stands*
The gully shown to the right was the outlet of a brook
of which one branch came down just behind the line of
the present Alfred Street, and another branch came down
from near St. Joseph’s Hall and across Main, Stone and
York streets. The line of trees in the background
was on what was later called Biddeford Heights, and
about on the line of the present Birch Street.
The ground plan of the fort is shov/n below, as drawn by
the same engineer in 1699*
a Main watch tower
b Rear watch tower
1 Captain’s house
2 Storehouse for goods
used in trading with
Indians
3.4.5 Soldiers* barracks
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a&S
Stories and Legends:
But before dealing with the next war there are two other
stories that need telling. They show very clearly that in all
the constant danger from Indians there was still plenty of
other interest in the life of the people. The first story
concerns Captain John Aiden, son-in-law of Major Phillips, who
in 1692 was accused in Boston of v/itchcraft. Sent to Salem for
trial. Captain Aiden was taken before the three magistrates
(one of them an ancestor of the American v/riter, Nathaniel
Hawthorne) who were investigating the charges of witchcraft made
by (as was proved later) silly and hysterical girls. Aldcn was
a distinguished man. He had been an Indian fighter, and a naval
commander; he was then about seventy years old. And this is the
ordeal he faced, as told in an old writing of that time.
“Those Wenches being present, who plaid (played) their
jugling tricks, falling dov;n, crying out, and staring
in Peoples Faces; the Magistrates demanded of them who
it was of all the People in the Room that hurt them?
One of these Accusers pointed several times at one
Captain Hill, there present, but spake nothing; the
same Accuser had a Man standing at her back to hold
her up; he stooped down to her ear, then she cried out,
Aldin, Aldin, afflicted her. One of the Magistrates
asked her if she had ever seen Aldin; she answered no;
he asked her how she knew it was Aldin? She said the
Man told her so.
“Then all were ordered to go down into the Street,
where a Ring was made; and the same Accuser cried out,
*There stands Aldin, a bold fellow with his Hat on
before the Judges, he sells Powder and Shot to the
Indians and French. .... * Then was Aldin committed
to the Marshal *s Custody, and his Sivord taken from
him; for they (the girls) said he afflicted them v/ith
his Sword. After some hours Aldin was sent for to the
Meeting-house in the Village before the Mrgistrates,
who required Aiden to stand upon a Chair, to the open
view of all the People.
“The Accusers cried out that Aldin did pinch them, then,
when he stood upon the Chair, in the sight of all the
People, a good way distant from themj one of the
Magistrates bid the Marshal to hold open Aldin *s
hands, that he might not pinch those Creatures (by
magic or witchcraft) . Aldin asked them why they
should think that he should come to that Village to
afflict those persons that he never knew or saw before?
....They bid Aldin look upon the Accusers, which he
did, and then they fell dov/n. “
On the strength of such testimony the magistrates solemnly
ordered Captain Aiden taken back to Boston and put in prison. All
bail was refused for him and he stayed in prison for fifteen
weeks until his friends, convinced that he was in danger of
23
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ad doXdv/ faT^aoooA odX aoqi; AooX nXbXA bXd x-^^****
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XXk •floaXTq aX Xwq.bnr floXaoS oX jto.^-d n>^ax nabXA aXaXqaO baroi^o
nr^j^tXt Tot noaXTq nl b 'xoXa od bna aUd Tot b-ciJtoT sow XXod
to T^sa-b nX aow sd X.>'rij boonlvaoo fabnoXTt aXd XXXno adoow
Stories and Legends:
being put to death (as other innocent men and women were at that
time), persuaded the Captain to escape. And when the witchcraft
accusers were finally exposed as the hysterical and malicious
frauds that they were, the name of Captain Aiden was officially
cleared (in April, I693) of all the charges so falsely made
against him. He lived nearly ten years longer (until 1702). He
had often visited here at the Major Phillips* home; it is very
certain that the story of his ordeal in the witchcraft craze in
Salem would have reached here and been much discussed. And it is
a fair inference that the people here, hearing of Captain Aiden *6
ordeal and danger, must have concluded that it was possibly less
dangerous here (in spite of Indians) than it was in Salem exposed
to the witch-hunters. There is nothing in Biddeford history or
legend to match the ignorance, malice and sheer stupidity of the
Salem witchcraft craze. And Biddeford can be justly proud of
the contrast.
The second story deals with a ship -launching at the Pool
in 1696 - just a year before the Fletchers '(Pendleton and his
two sons) were captured by the Indians. Whether this was the
first launching or not, known here, no one can be sure. Though
it is probable that there had been other launchings, since the
letter quoted below does not show the launching to be any unusual
occurrence. The whole story can be road between the lines of
a letter written by Colonel V/illiam Pepparell (father of the
better-known Sir William Pepperoll) to’ a Captain John Hill who
was apparently Peppe re 11 *s agent. The letter is addressed to
Captain John Hill, at Fort Mary, and shows that fort to have
been built before I700. It- stood on the hill commanding the
entrance to Biddeford Pool. The sloop mentioned in the letter
was apparently being built nearby. This is the letter:
Kittery Point, November 12, I696
Captain Hill:
Sir: With much trouble I have gotten men
and sent for the sloop, and desire you to dispatch them
with all speed, for, if all things be ready, they may be
fitted to leave in two days as well as in seven years.
If you and the carpenter think it convenient, end the
ground has not too much descent, I think it may be safer
and be.tter to bend her sails before you launch her, so
as to leave immediately. But I shall leave it to your
management, and desire you to hasten them day and night;
for. Sir, it will be dangerous tarrying there, on
account of hostile savages in the vicinity, and it will
be very expensive to keep the men on pay.
I send you a barrel of rum, and there is a cask of
wine to launch with. So, with my services to yourself
and lady, hoping they are all in good health, as I am
24.
Stories and Legends:
at present, who are your humble servant at command,
WILLIAI/I PEPPERISLL
That barrel and that cask illustrate a custom of the day,
and there can be no doubt that the launching of that sloop
(almost 250 years ago) was a great success. On such
occasions it was considered necessary that not only should the
water be wet, but the workmen and spectators should be well wet
also. Or maybe Colonel Fepperell thought they would launch
the sloop at low tide - and need the extra moisture.
Incidentally while the Fepperell name is invariably
spelled with only one r both in Biddeford and Saco, there is
no doubt that Colonel V/illiam, and Sir William, his son,
wrote the name as signed above - with • the double r. But
spellings were not as fixed then, as they are now, and even in
the Fepperell family the spelling varied. There is still on
record in York County a deed executed in 172? "by Colonel
William and his wife Margery. Side by side the Colonel and
his wife signed the document. But the Colonel signed his
name *l?epperrell** while his wife spelled it **Peprell*^ in her
signature, and on the same document.
How the sloop probably looked
The drav/ing is made from an old print that
dates from just a few years after the
launching at the Pool. The print shows a
typical sloop of the time.
25
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no XXi^ ax ^ddT •baXtav ^nlXIaqa ad^ x^Xaal Xlan^qqsf 9n^
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bno XanoXoO >/tr’ abXa x<^ abXi& •X^a^aSI alXv aid bm aalXXXW
aid ban^Xa X^toXoO. ;>fll l«6i •^a^anuocb arfi ban^a sf^Xnr aid
tdri nl •XXasqx-IP 11 baXXaqi ^Xw aid aXXda •XXanaqqa^ tfoan
•InMioob eaL<%s adl no bna f trujl.inila
bifA yji xXdadcnq q^oia »dl woH
loiil InXnq bXc ita ooi;l Bbim al snXws'xb adT
adl at'^tx wt»t a laut *0X1 aol^b
a awod« InXnq .Itpof adl la ^nldaniraX
• amll cril q:?.Xa XiaXqxl
Stories and Legends:
In June of I7O3 a great meeting between Indians and white
men was held in what is now Portland. The meeting was held to
prevent, if possible, any outbreak of war. But the atmosphere
was such that the white officials attending the meeting quietly
arranged to seat themselves between the various Indian chiefs,
and not in a separate body. It was well that they took such a
precaution because after the meeting was over it was suggested
that all the muskets be fired to celebrate the end of the meeting.
And when the round was fired, it was discovered that all the
Indian muskets had been loaded with bullets - but the Indians had
seen no chance to fire at the whites without hitting their own
sagamores or chiefs. And although the meeting ended with very
’’solemn professions of friendship”, there was savage warfare all
along this coast in August of that same year. Every settlement
from Portland to v/ells was attacked, and the leader of the enemy
raiding party later claimed that three hundred of the English
settlers had been killed.
In this attack the stone fort at the Falls (whose picture
is shewn on page 22a) was able to beat off the Indians, although
eleven of the garrison were killed and tv/enty-four prisoners
were carried off by the Indians. There was also an Indian
attack at or near the Pod, but no real story has come down
regarding it. In December of that same year, five of the
inhabitants here, cutting down trees fer firewood, were waylaid
by the Indians, and three were killed.
In 1705 a Captain Hill was sent from Canada to arrange for
the ransom and return of prisoners. He had been taken prisoner
himself, and he reported that at that time there were 114
prisoners held by the French, and 70 more known to be held by
the Indians. It is probable that most of these prisoners came
from along the Maine coast. This was a bitterly fought war, and
it is the first in which there is local mention of prisoners
, being tortured by the Indians. It was in this war also that
the governments of Massachusetts (of which Maine was a part) and
New Han^) shire offered a bounty of 20 English pounds ($100) for
every Indian prisoner under ten years of age, and a bounty of
40 pounds ($200) for every older Indian taken - or for his scalp.*
Three stories have come down tc us from this war. The first
dates from about 1705> and runs as follows:
About this time Ebenezer Hill and his wife Abigail
(they lived in Biddeford, at the head of Ferry Lane, and
had just recently been married) were carried into captivity.
Several Indians who professed to be friendly and who were
frequently in the houses of the inhabitants, called at
Mr. Hill’s in the usual manner one morning and partook of
some food which was offered them.
They left the house, but soon after returned. Finding
Mr. Hill gone, they told his wife that they must make her
a prisoner. They proceeded to plunder such articles from
26
Stories and Legends:
the house as they could conveniently carry away, and
destroying others. When Mr. Hill came back he found his
v/ife secured (having her arms tied) and the savages
employed in emptying a feather bed (to secure the bed- tick).
He gave himself into their hfnds (so that he and his wife
would not be separated) . and the Indians decamped with the
prisoners# They were carried to Canada where they remained
for three years# Their oldest son, Ebenezer, was bora
either in Canada or while they were on their return. He
v/as familiarly called the Frenchman in after years (because
he was supposed to have been born while his parents were
prisoners in Canada).
Two years later , in 1707j there was a curious battle at
V/ inter Harbor that might be called the first (and only) naval
battle in Biddeford history. The fullest account found gives the
story thus:
’’Much the boldest movement made this year was on the
21st of September by a party of 150 Indians, coming in ^0
canoes to V/inter Harbor. Here they atten^ted to take
possession of two shallops lying at anchor, while Captain
Austin, Mr. Harmon, John Cole, sergeant of the garrison,
and five others were on board. By waiting till the enemy
was near, and then firing all at once, they (the white men)
threw the savage flotilla into great confusion. Recovering
themselves, the Indians returned a discharge of musketry
with so much spirit th-rt our men were forced to abandon one
of the shallops; and entering the other, cut her cables,
endevored to spread the sails, and put to sea."
The rest of the story is told in the words of one of
the men who took part, but whose name is unknown:
•’The Indians, instantly taking possession of the little
prize, hcd up the mainsail before ours was half mast;
and plied their oars and paddles so dexterously on
each side as to render their pursuit fearful. Their
bark, however, was a dull sailer, and themselves
unskilful mariners; and when they saw they were
falling astern (of the white men’s shallop), a number
of them in a dozen canoes, by means of fishlines,
undertook to tow her ahead. In the chase, a breath
of air breezed up and by hauling her too near the
wind, she came several times to stays - which greatly
retarded her progress. A perpetual firing was kept
up by the parties on each other; and so near together
were they at times - so smart was the skirmish - and
so daring the Indians that they attempted to seize
the blades of the oars as our men were rowing. The
engagement lasted about three hours; and when the
chase ceased, our men had scarcely five charges of
powder left. Our loss was only one man, Benjamin
Daniel, fatally wounded, who exclaimed; 'I am a dead
27.
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Stories and Legends:
man, but give me a gun to kill one more before I gc.' *
Yet the brave man had net strength to fire.
About nine of the enemy were killed in this well-fought
skirmish, and twice as many wounded.”
Another account says that there was a boy who helped the
eight men escape with the one small sailboat. But even with
the boy added, it seems that 150 Indians would have been
a tough handful for eight men and a boy to escape, especially
when armed with muskets and close enough to "seize the blades
of the oars." But that*s the way the story was told, and that
is the way it has come down to us. In that respect, the story
has interesting reminders of the story Captf in Vines heard in
Boston nearly , sixty-five years before (sec- pages 8 and 9), of
the valiant sea-captain and the Turkish pirates.
The running chase and battle, incidentally, must have taken
place in the area between the mouth of the Pool and the chain
of islands (Wood, Basket and Stage islands) that made up the
natural harbor shown on the old maps as V/intcr Harbor.
7,
' fj!';
\
This map was traced from
an official map of Biddeford,
made in 179^? quite 90
years after the canoe fight. But
the place had chcinged very little
then. The three ponds shown, are
still to be seen along the road
at Fortunes Rocks. The figure 1
marks Ferry Lane. 2 marks the site
of Fort Mary. 3 marks Camp iiillis, then
\ known as Bare Knee P oint. ^
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Stories and Legends:
In 1708, the next year after the battle on water between
the canoes and the sailboat, the stone fort at the Falls was
abandoned (probably because nearly all residents had left that
vicinity) and in the next two years Fort Mary was built on the
hill overlooking the Gut and the Pool. There are indications
that there had been an earlier fort somewhere near, also known
as Fort Mary, but the evidence is clear that the construction
done from I708 to I71O was so large as to constitute a wholly
new fort. In a document of 171? j Fort Mary is described as a
’’Wooden Fort.”
The fort had barely been finished when in August, 1710, a
raiding party of about 50 made an attack on Winter Harbor village,
killing a woman and capturing two men. One of the men was
Pendleton Fletcher, and it was his fourth time as an Indian
prisoner. The garrison of Fort Mary is said to have ransomed
him. But they must have cautioned him against letting this
captivity business get to be a habit#
The very next week another raiding party killed three people
at Winter Harbor end carried away six as captives - but Pendleton
doesn't seem to have been one of the six. Maybe he had learned
at last how to dodge an Indian.
It was apparently about this time that the famous story of
Mary Dyer began. The best version, written down in I88O from
family tradition, runs as follows:
’’The savages were continually prowling around and
watching every movement of the settlers. Many who
ventured out were slain. Six soldiers at Fort Mary
who had been out on the beach, were attacked and arter
a fierce encounter were overpowered by superior
numbers; some were captured, and the others killed.
Mary Dyer, who lived on the Neck, or at the Pool,
one day while the men were out fishing she saw some
Indians coming down the beach toward her house. She
knew the danger of her situation, and she had two
small children. With one of the children in her arms,
and the other clinging to her dress, she hastened to
the Gut. A boat was lying there, and placing her
children in it she seized an oar, pushed the boat from
land, and glided over the dashing surface like a
frightened bird. She landed (on the opposite side of
the Gut), secured her boat, and while climbing the
cliff to reach Fort Mary a bullet from an Indian's
musket struck the ground near her. She coolly stopped
and put a stick into the earth to mark the spot. The
Indians plundered her house, but she (and her children)
remained safe in the Fort. After the Indians retired
she went to the spot where the bullet struck, dug it
out, ard it was kept in the family for three generations
as a memorial to her heroism.”
Another version of the legend says that a bullet passed
29
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Stories and Legends;
through her homespun skirt, without wounding her. And as late
as 1901 a writer claimed to have seen the skirt, the bullet hole
still in it, preserved in a Biddeford home.
Queen Anne *s War ended in Europe in 17135 Indian raids
stopped here for another ten years. In 1717 the town records
began again, and in 1718 the town was formally named Biddeford.
From this period date the oldest houses that still siarvive. This
was also the period when '*garrison houses** became important here.
The principal survivor is the so-called Jordan Garrison, now
known as the Goldthwait House at Hill's Beach. This house was
built as early (and perhaps earlier) as 1717 ty Captain Samuel
•Jordon and a description written in I83O says that the house "was
more strongly fortified and secured against the Indians than any
other in tov;n, being encompassed by a stone wall of great strength
-the remains of which are still seen (in 183O). Below is a
probable view of the Goldthwait House as it looked when actively
used as a garrison house.
Captain Jordan's father hfd been killed by Indians, and
Captain Jordan himself had been a prisoner of the Indians when
he was only a boy. He learned the Indian language while a
prisoner and after he came to Biddeford to live he was often
used to interpret important messages between Indians and whites.
He was an expert marksman and the Indians knew it. In July of
1723 he was working in a field somewhere near his house. He had
his loaded musket with him and when Indians suddenly appeared
he took aim and threatened to fire. The trouble was, however,
that he had not brought extra ammunition - when he fired his
musket he would be through. Accordingly he kept his musket in
a threatening position, just as if he was ready to shoot, and
began to edge backwards toward his garrison. The Indians
followed but took good care not to get too close - close enough
to make him shoot. And so he was able to get inside the stone
wall of the garrison where he could shoot and drive them off.
At another time the Indians managed to creep inside the
garrison wall before they were seen. Captain Jordan was alone
with his family but at once began to call out as though he were
telling a number of men to get their nuskets. The Indians thought
he must have at least a squad of armed men with him, and they
hurriedly got outside the garrison wall again.
Still another story of Captain Jordan runs that one day
in the woods just back of his home he discovered a party of
Indians having some kind of a party over a calf which they had
stolen from the Jordan herd. He crept skillfully up behind them,
close enough to he<:.r and see v/hat they v/ere doing. They were
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Stories and Legends:
seated around the dead calf, cutting slices from the flesh, and
each Indian was saying: "So we will cut Jordan." It v/as more
than Captain Jordan could stand - and he sent a charge of shot
whizzing through the group. One Indian was killed, and the
others were so startled that they fled through the woods without
even trying to find out whether the Captain was alone or not. In
fact, they ran so fast that they did not even take their muskets.
The Indians never did get to kill or capture Captain Samuel
Jordan. He died peacefully nearly thirty years later and was
buried in the small burying ground on the Pool Road, near the
entrance to the Hill's Beach Road, where his gravestone may still
be seen.
Another story of this time concerns a John Stackpole who
was walking along the beach between the Pool and Fortunes Rocks.
He suddenly saw Indians in the distance (apparently coming from
the direction of Fortunes Rocks) and he turned and ran toward
the Pool. It must have been low tide because Stackpole started
to wade across the Pool, probably trying to reach the Jordan
garrison. But one of the Indians (well-known to the settlers os
Wahwa) waded out after Stackpole with the cry. "Boon quarter,
John.* Boon quarter.*", by which he meant that Stackpole *s life
would be spared if he surrendered.
So John Stackpole, finding the Indians were getting too
close, stopped and surrendered. They took him to Canada but
travelled so leisurely that they spent a winter on the way, in
the wilderness near the White Mountains. He finally was released
and got back home after an absence of nineteen months. At that
he was lucky. Two other men - Nathaniel Tarbox and Thomas Haley -
were killed by the Indians at Winter Harbor in a similc.r
encounter.
Somewhere about this time a group of stories center around
another old house still standing in Biddeford. On the Pool Road,
opposite the entrance to an old road that once led to Fortunes
Rocks, stands the Haley House. It is knov;n to have been standing
since 1730 » and there are good reasons for believing that it was
built even earlier. Possibly as early as the Jordan Garrison,
now known as the Goldthwait House.
The Haley House, as it looked about l880
31
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Stories and Legends:
Here are the legends of the Haley House, as told in l880:
’’Mr, Haley was for many years on friendly terms with
the Indians, and remained in his house after many of
his neighbors went into garrisons. A blockhouse
stood in the field of John Tarbox, near the water, on
the form adjoining the Haleys. This was known as the
Dyer and Tarbox Garrison. Mr. Haley *s neighbors
exhorted him to join them, but believing the natives
to be friendly he supposed he would be safe.
One night, however, he was aroused by a loud
rapping at the door. He arose and unbarred it, and
found that two Indians sought admittance , saying they
desired to warm themselves. He admitted them and
kindly kindled the fire in the big fireplace. He soon
saw that they intended mischief, and ordered them out,
but they reached in the fireplace, drew out flaming
sticks and threw them around the room, trying to set
the house on fire. Mr. Haley then seized his musket
and, as the Indians were armed only with tomahawks,
he was able to drive them out of the house and into
the woods while Mrs. Haley managed to put out the
fires they had started. After that experience the
Haleys took shelter in the nearby garrison house.
**But from that time the Indian enmity was aroused
and they continurliy tried to waylay him. He always
went armed (he was a good shot) and had several
narrow escapes. At this time the inhabitants did not
fence in their cattle; the grazing was in common, and
at night the cattle were secured in stockades as a
precaution against wolves (which still infested the
country) as well as a protection against the Indians.
The cattle were bells, the sound of which each owner
could recognize.
*K)ne night Mr. Haley’s cows did not return with
the others, and the family waited anxiously till
darkness gathered in the forests. Then the tinkling
of a ccw bell could be distinctly he^rd, and it was
evident that the animal was not far distant. So Mr.
Haley started out to find her and the people in the
garrison could hear the bell grow fainter as if the
cow was moving away from Haley. Then came the sound
of a musket shot, and the tinkling of the bell stopped.
The garrison was alarmed; an armed squad hastened in
the direction of the sound. They soon found the cow -
it had been killed - and further on lay what was left
of Mr. Haley. His body had been cut in small pieces.
The Indians had evidently killed the cow early in the
day, and had used the bell as a decoy to entice him
out to be killed. This is supposed to have taken
place about 1724, and not far from the Haley House.
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Stories and Legends;
Another legend runs:
”In those trying times the men went armed to their
labors in the field, and the women guarded the garrison*
Some stood sentry, while others worked at the cards (for
wool), the wheel, or the loom. One day at this garrison
the women at the lookout saw several savages secreted near
the house, evidently listening to learn if the men were
within.
'•The women at first thought to fire a signal to call
the men home, but fearing they would fall into an ambush...
they (the women) resorted to strategem to terrify the
lurking Indians. So they placed hats upon poles and showed
the hats frequently at the windows and above the palisades*
The Indians were near enough to hear the movements within.
"In the upper story of the house was a pile of punpkins*
The women collected these at the head of the stairs, and the
woman with the strongest voice commenced giving comma.nds.
Then at a given signal the other women, at regular intervals,
rolled the pumpkins down the stairs. This sounded like the
footsteps of a squad of men rushing out of the house. At
the same time (with the pumpkins rolling ) the women fired
their muskets - and the Indians (there were l8 of them) fled
to the woods, thinking they had been discovered and were
about to be attacked by a superior force of men. Thus the
heroic women 'held the fort.
This famous story is told in connection with the Haley
House but it may concern the nearby garrison house mentioned in
the preceding stories of Mr. Haley and the Indians. At all
events, the incident must have occurred in the Haley neighborhood.
Incidentally a similar story is told in New Hampshire about
a Mary Corliss who being necessarily left alone by her husband
one dc?.y, discovered Indians skulking about her isolated home and
frightened them off by rolling cheese down the cellar stairs.
The bumping of the large round cheese, like the bumping of the
pumpkins, frightened off the Indians in this New Hampshire
legend. The Indians were certainly scary, as many old stories
show.
In 1725 came the famous "Lovewell's Fight" in which the
remaining Saco Valley Indians, under their chiefs Paugus, Wahwa,
end Adeawando., ambushed and almost completely wiped out a force
of 4-6 white scalp-hunters near the present Frye burg. Much false
romance has been written around this "massacre." The truth is
that Captain Love well was a professional scalp-hunter, a paying
business in those days when Massachusetts paid $500 for every
Indian scalp. One of Lovewell's feats was to kill end scalp ten
sleeping Indians - for which he was paid 1000 English pounds, or
about $5000. But the "massacre" of Lovewell and his men was
long remembered in Biddeford because one of the survivors made his
way here, and was healed of his wounds. This closed the fourth
Indian war for Biddeford.
33.
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Stories and Legends:
Fort and Trading Post
built in 1730
This fort and trading post was built to keep the Indians,
coming here to trade their furs, away from Biddeford. It was
located on the river bank, about ten miles from Biddeford, at
Union Falls in the district now known as Dayton. There is no
record that it was ever attacked by Indians. It continued in
active use until about 1759 when the small cannon in the upper
story were removed to a fort in Boston Harbor in Massachusetts.
The Indians used to call these cannon ’’thunder guns" and were
very much afraid of them.
It is* said that the portholes or embrasures in the fort
and palisade were closed tight by blocks of wood. Each block
had a long wooden handle and was connected with the stockade
by a piece of cord. "V/hen the men were loading their muskets
the block was thrust into the loop hole ; when ready to fire
the block was removed and allowed to hang within easy reach."
It was these blocks, it is said, that gave the name "block
house" to such fortifier tions. The idea was to keep the holes
from being used by Indians (who might have crept up unseen) tc
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Stories and Legends:
shoot through from the outside , at the garrison# The normal
garrison of this fort was ten soldiers, but in time of danger
twenty soldiers were kept in the place. It is not known just
how accurate this drav/ing is, but it comes from an old book
written by a man who knew old residents who had seen and lived
in the fort. The type of fortification shown was one much
used during the later Indian wars.
In March of 1744 another war broke out between France and
England. From bitter experience the people were sure that there
would be fighting on this side of the ocean also. A diary kopt
by a Portland minister at the time says, in fact: ’’All the
thoughts and talk are about war. People ere everywhere
garri soning.** In Biddeford some of the old garrisons were
repaired and the town records show that a large new refuge was
begun whose specifications were given as sixty feet square and
made with planks two inches thick. Two flankers, or Wc?.tch towers,
were built at opposite comers - one flanker being fifteen feet
square, and the other ten feet square. The planks were built,
apparently,, as a palisade around the town parsonage which stood
somewhere along the Pool Road and above the present Morrill School.
From another source it is learned that in such palisades
the planks were sunk three and a half feet in the ground, and
IP rejected ten fee-t above ground. The plan of such a stockade
is shown below.
At this same time, on the seashore near Fortunes Rocks, four
houses were built in the fwm of a square and apparently joined
by a palisade. A number of families from V^inter Harbor took
refuge there. Also in what is now the center of Biddeford the
"public house" or inn of Captain Daniel Smith 'Vas secured by
a brick wall on the inside, with flankers at each end." This
inn is believed to have stood on the -high ground just behind the
City Building, and about where the Dearborn-Bacon-Vifarren house
now stands at 26 South Street. This location was then part of
the main postroad from Boston.
Perhaps because of these precautions the Indians made no
organized attacks here during this fifth Indian war that lasted
35.
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Stories and Legends:
from 1744 to 174-8. But Indians lurked stealthily in the woods*
particularly along the Pool Road, and it was never saf^e for the
people to relax their caution and watchfulness. It may be that
to this war belongs the story of the two Biddeford girls who had
been living in a garrison house somewhere near Ferry Lane. No
Indians had been seen for some time, and so one day the girls
grew tired of being cooped up inside the palisade and wandered
off to the river bank. They had been gone some time, end
had gotten out of sight of the garrison, when a sentry heard
what seemed to be a number of blue jays calling in the woods. It
was an old Indian trick, to signal by bird calls, end the sentry
decided there were too many calls for one flock of birds. He
gave the alarm, a gun v/as fired, the people working in the fields
nearby hurried to the garrison house. The gate was left open
for the two girls who now suddenly appeared in the distance,
running hard for safety.
And then the people in the garrison saw with horror that two
Indians had suddenly appeared and were trying to cut the girls
off from the garrison# They were beyond musket shot; the men in
the garrison could only watch helplessly (to venture out might
have meant running into an Indian ambush) as the girls ran still
faster to evade the Indians. Luckily the two savages were too
late to intercept the girls, and when they saw that they could not
catch them, one Indian stopped and fired his musket - the bullet
going through the skirt of one of the girls, but without wounding
her. And before the musket could be reloaded again (an operation
that took some time in those old muzzle -loading days) the girls
had managed to reach the garrison and safety#
But on the morning of September 6, 174-6, two young men of
the Pool Road v/ere not so lucky. Here is the story as it was
written dovm in I83O, by a man who had talked with Biddeford
residents who had been children at the time of the tragedy.
’*0n the morning of Sep. 6, two young men, sons of Mr.
Joseph Gordon, and named Pike and Joseph respectively, were
surprised by Indians while on the way from their father's
house to the Falls. They were employed in the Cole mill
(a lumber mill) and left home between daylight and sunrise
to go to their work# As they were passing a blacksmith's
shop which stood a few rods below the house of Captain
James Murch, the Indians rushed from behind it into the
road; the young men turned and ran. Joseph, who was very
swift of foot, seemed likely to escape and the savages,
fearing to lose him, fired and killed him on the spot. Pike
(the other young man) was taken by a part of the scouting
party (of Indians) who lay concealed further down the road,
and was carried to Canada.
"The Indians retreated at first into a swamp not far
from the road, taking with them the body of Joseph. It is
said they secreted themselves the- re all the day, notwith¬
standing that the inhebitrnts turned out and made a diligent
search for the young men..... Seven weeks afterward, the
36.
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Stories and Legends:
remains of the young man were found and conveyed the first
certain information of his melancholy fate to the afflicted
family. A letter was afterwards received from Pike (the
other brother) at Quebec, giving an account of his capture;
he died in that city the same winter, on December 6th.*'
Pike Gordon, the brother who was captured, seems to
have been quite a man. For the story goes- on that when the
Indians got away from here and started back to Canada, Pike found
himself part of a group of prisoners whom the Indians treated
"with great indignity as well as cruelty." Particularly, they
fed the prisoners with mere scraps and "leavings", and would not
allow the captives to eat with them. But one day when the Indians
had killed some vdld animal and (after cutting off all the best
portions for themselves) threw the poor remstinder to the prisoners
to eat as best they could, the insolent and scornful treatment so
angered young Gordon that he walked right up to the fire around
which the Indians were sitting, eating the good meat. V/ith a
knife he cut himself a slice from the meat hung by the fire; ate
it, and cut himself some more. And thus, in spite of the fierce
frowns of the watching Indians, Pike Gordon got himself the first
good meal he had had since being tstken prisoner. What's more,
his courage so impressed the Indians that thereafter he was
always allov/ed to eat with them (and of the best food) while the
other (and timid) captives kept on getting scraps.
The tragedy of the Gordon brothers made a great stir. In
those days, and for many yerrs afterward, it was the custom for
ballads to be written around unusual events. These ballads were
often printed in what were colled "broadsides" (because they
were printed on paper the size of a handbill) and sold widely,
being used as recitations, and as mementos. It is said that a
young Biddeford woman, who hrd been engaged to Joseph Gordon,
wrote a ballad for the occasion, but whether it was printed or
not is not known. However, a part of the ballad hrs been
preserved and it began as follows:
" The sixth day of September,
a mighty blast there fell.
Upon the town of Biddeford,
as is known very well.
There was two promising likely youths
most quickly snatched away.
As they were walking in the street;
how soon they're took av/ay.*
One of them presently was slain,
the other to the woods
Was by those heathen led away.
The home of the Gordon brothers was on the Pool Road
just below West Brook. The Cole mill (a sawmill) to which they
started to work, stood on the river bank where the Sc'.co-Lowell
Shops nov/ stand. The house of Captain Murch, near which the
37
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Stories and Legends:
Indians lay in ambush, and watched the brothers approach, stood
on the right hand side of Clifford Street as it leads from Pool
to Nason *8 Hill. Starting from just beyond West Brook, a walk
on the Pool Road to Clifford, and a short distance on Clifford
after turning off the Pool Road, will retrace the footsteps of
the Gordon brothers on that tragic September morning of 174-6.
The next year, 174-75 came the last Indian killing in
Biddeford, On April 17th of that year, a man named Nathaniel
Eliot and his son were killed near the Pool Road just above
where the present Guinea Road turns off. The Eliots lived '‘near
the Falls”, which means that their home was scnieyheie near present
Main Street. On this day in April they had driven down the
Pool Road to the farm of William Murch which was below the old
Pool Road church and on a private road just above the present
Guinea Road. There they bought hay of William launch, loaded it
on their wagon and started out toward the Pool Road and home.
They were crossing a field, with the Pool Road in sight, when
suddenly Indians ambushed in the woods fired upon them and
the father was instantly killed. The story runs that even then
the son might have whipped up the horses and eserped but the
killing of his father so angered him that he seized the musket
(men did not travel then without a musket handy) and paused to
fire back at the Indians. Another Indian volley then killed
him.
Flushed with that success the Indians swept down on the
Murch farm, found Mr. Murch near the barn and took him prisoner.
They entered the bam and maliciously cut out the tongues of all
the Murch cattle - a strange piece of savagery for which no good
explanation has come down. They then fled with their prisoner,
made their way up river to the White Mountains and ultimately
carried William Murch to Canada. V/hether he was there ransomed,
or simply released at the close of the war, is not known. But
at any rate he was able to return to Biddeford the next year.
There is one humorous note in the story as it was later
told, and written down in I83O. An aged woman of Biddeford
remembered that on this day in 174-7 (when she was five or six
years old) her father came running into their Pool Road home,
saying: "There must be mischief done, for Parson Morrill is
running his horse.*" Parson Morrill was the town minister,
pastor of the old Peel Road church (then the only church in
Biddeford). He had been prstor for five years - but he was
still only twenty-five years old. The story indicates that he
was a grave and serious young man whose saddle horse usually
proceeded at a sedate pace. As was later learned, the young
parson had been quietly ambling along the Pool Road that
morning, on horseback, talking quietly with his cemp anion who
was a visiting minister. Suddenly they heard the sound of the
muskets that killed the Murches and soon saw Indians in the
distance. Wheeling their horses around, the two ministers put
spurs to their steeds and rode wildly up the Pool Read to the
38.
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Stories and Legends:
safety of the parsonage which seems to have been located a short
distance above the present Morrill School and was strongly
fortified# But no one seems to have written a balldd about
the unlucky Murches - or about Parson Morrill’s ride#
From this time on, the only Indians seen in Biddeford were '
peaceful Indians# Those that came were from farther north, and
came for the Spring and Summer fishing# Until industries began
to be built on what is now Factory Island, that island was a
favorite Indian canping ground# And sometimes v/hen the Indians
were holding a seasonal dance or festival, the noise from the
Island would make Biddeford residents look apprehensively across
the river where dark forms could be seen dancing - silhouetted
against huge fires burning on the Island# In fact, the name
Indian Island was in common use for many years after the American
Revolution-
There were also seasonal Indian encanpments along the
lower river# A spring on the river bank, jsut back of the
present Stella Maris School, was long known as Indian ^ring
because the Indians camped near it each Summer# It is the same
site, incidentally, as that shown on Champlain’s map of I605
when he also found Indians camping there. Two hundred and
fifty years later (in l855) 9 Q Biddeford newspaper mentioned the
fact that Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Indians were encamped at
that spot# In the Fourth of July celebration at the Pool, these
Indians gave exhibition races in their birch canoes.
It is unfortunate that no early study was made of the .
Saco Valley Indians before their survivors were driven away after
the Love well War, in 172?# Afterwards confusion arose because
habits and customs found among the Indians of the Far West, were
incorrectly attributed to the Indians the first settlers had
known here# One interesting illustration is in the contrast
between the wigwam or teepee (both names being used inaccurately)
of the Indians of the West, and the wigwams shown on Samuel
Champlain’s map of 1605# Below is an accurate reproduction of
how the framework of the domelike wigwams seen by Champlain were
quickly erected and fastened, before being covered with bark and
skins:
39
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a'iU^-aoU aaaasi #uo(te aa • aMouU planXaa aa#
rsoir ol atat aaalbcil acU^tiso «al#
tnB fiitvoa naa mmio saoif? ^mmUhal lifi^om^q
a9^*U«utfluU iKaa»u& tAa ^ ama
a »«» bnaXai ^siU flmraXtl x*to;^9a1t vcm al ^aite na I'XXntf a<l ot
ait:iitaX atli ivadv ^mkimcm teA «teuMi malqfa^a xtaXtal
acCt Aot) aalotf mi$ tiavi^ati) w •onol^ ir43oaa»a a lalbXoif ariaw
aaaraa ^avXansdrxqqn ^ooX a^fta^Xae^ b*to1tit>£>l€ fttiitm f>lum fceaXaX
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laXo^ Aailbal aa mmt^ laoX a^ ^ZootioB aJh^aH aXXaia Xaaa^c
MMa a^ at tX •<xaMua Aaaa Si iraaa 6«i>o^» aiwXbaX miS taaadaa
tool qaa a^nXaXqnuyO iio ivraria XaiiX aa ^xtimsnutioni lOXta
bfia taabmai a«T yXqgiao anativiX brnro/t oaia mi aulm
mSi bm^iSam xtfsqb^m a at) aotaX aaaov V^tt
ta ta^maaa aasa aosltuiX fbboA^pottaaaaf tna ^toaaitoii<i^ Xa^ toat
■aadx fioat adX ta mtXs^aXaa ^ii4 to AXwoSI ariX ol Mtoqa SudS
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aaiiaoad aaoaa mtai/taoo a^avs'i^XtA 4S^X at |ii4l XXtvMro4 adt
aanr ttdalf a'sf eitt to aAitOrti viS ^^rmm BitiKit awiiM tea BSidui
tm aaaXJtaa taatt aciX ^mttmX oat at OatodXtXta tXtoa*nooffl
Xaaiteoo adX ot at mkSH%Smulti nixtataatat oceO ♦oaarf aaooA
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XoMMia mb amcm mmtm^ tdX fiaui taatV odt to air'^ttaX adt to
to aottooteaqaa atrauiooa m at waXaC to QSfl a^ataXtfgaiO
rxaa aata aiMi)wit« adtlasoa ad# ta araowwiyi ad# ate
tea tirnS iskm hytmom i/itte stette ibMiataat tea ta^ata xXitatvp
laatala
Stories and Legends
The missing Biddeford hell
Such evidence as has been found to support Biddeford *s
famous legend of the English bell, points clearly to this period
of the Indian wars. For almost thirty years no town records
were kept, showing that . • so many inhabitants had been driven
away by the constant deadly fear of Indian savagery that those
who remained were either too upset or too few to even hold a
town meeting.
But in 1717 the town records began anew, never to be
Interrupted again. The very next year (1718) the name of
Biddeford was adopted and legend insists that the name was taken
because some of the new settlers had come from the English town
of Bideford in the famous County of Devon. That such naming was
not unusual is shown by the fact that at almost the same time
the inhabitants of the district then known as Cape Porpoise,
adopted the name Arundel. This was in 1719, and the town
history of Kennebunkport written in 1837 says plainly:
”The town was called Arundel in compliment to the
Earl of Arundel, descendant of Thomas, Earl of
Arundel, one of the original proprietors of New
England. Lord Arundel offered to give a bell to
the town but it was never sent for.”
As another interesting parallel there is the story of the town
of Coleraine in Massachusetts which was named for a Lord
Coleraine of Ireland. And an old history of 1839 says:
”His lordship was so well pleased with the honor done
him that he sent the inhabitants a fine bell; but
through the unfaithfulness of the agent to whom it
was intrusted, it never reached them. It is believed
still in existence, and used in one of the churches in
Boston.”
So Biddeford is not the only town in New England that blames
Boston for a missing bell. Boston evidently had taking ways,
and what Boston took Boston kept.
At any rate it is also clear that after adopting the name
of Biddeford, the people here began almost at once to build a
church or ”meeting house”. Little is known of that church
except that it was begun about T719i that it stood nearer to
Moore's Brook than the present old Pool Road church, and that
it was 35 feet long, 30 feet wide, had a separate door for men
and a separate door for women, with separate stairs leading to
the galleries for each sex. It would have been the most
natural thing in the world for someone here to write back to
friends or relatives in the English Bideford, telling of the
town's naming and of the building of the new meeting house. And
the history of the English town makes also clear that at this
39a
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Stories and Legends
very time there was an English noblewoman named Grace, Countess
Granville, who was Lady of the Manor of Bideford. We hardly
need to recall the parallel stories of Arundel and Coleraine to
realize that it would have been very natural for the Countess
Granville to have shown her pleasure at the news of the naming
of Biddeford in Maine with the gift of a bell.
It is true that Folsom’s History, written in I83O, does not
mention Biddeford' s bell. But then it is not always realized that
Folsom was not a native of Biddeford and in fact had only lived
here about six years when he wrote his History. It has become
increasingly evident in late years that he thus missed many good
Biddeford stories. So far as is now known the legend did not
appear in print until February of 1867 when the following note
appeared in the weekly Biddeford newspaper;
"In the early days of Biddeford, a lady sent a bell
to that place from Bideford, England, which arrived
in Boston where it remained for a long time and v/as
finally sold to pay for its freight and storage. An
effort was made several years ago to secure it for
the city, but it could not then be bought.
"Several of the citizens of Biddeford are again making
an effort to secure it, and as it is one of the
finest toned bells in Boston, and rightfully belongs
to Biddeford, we hope they will be successful."
Unfortunately the newspaper did not follow up that note, and we
know nothing more about that effort of recovery.
Almost fifty years later, in
1910, a letter to the Biddeford
Journal, gave a little more detail
and told the legend as it had been
handed down for 200 years in a
Biddeford family:
"Lady Bideford, of Bideford,
and for whom Biddeford was
named, sent a present... of
a very large and beautiful
bell which came in a sailing
vessel from Bideford, England,
to Boston, Mass. Ihe freight
was so large and the journey
so long in those days from
Boston to Maine that the good
people of the Old j^’irst
Church were hardly able to
contribute the necessary
freight money. Consequently
the bell is in Boston in the
steeple of the Old South
Church." 39b.
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Stories and Legends
There is another, and more doubtful, version of the legend
which says that it was a chandelier (not a bell) that was sent.
But all versions agree that the gift came from a lady in Bideford,
England; was intended for the church here; and that somehow the
gift stayed in Boston. Later additions to the legend say that
the bell was either destroyed in a Boston fire or that it became
so worn with use that it was melted down and recast, and its
identity lost. The one sure thing is that the bell never
reached Biddeford, and that it cannot now be identified in Boston.
One other thing seems sure. Which is that the bell was
intended for the church that was built in 1719, which was not the
old church now standing on the Pool Road. The present church
on the Pool Road was not built until 4o years later (in 1759)
and was so completely remodelled in 1840 that there is now no
resemblance to its 1759 appearance. Of the earlier church of
1719, for which the bell was actually sent, no description or
picture has come down to us. But the illustration given below
shows how it may have looked, and is based on the typical New
England meeting house of the period of the Indian wars.
39c
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/
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LEGENDS
of
OLD BIDDEFORD yy7n
♦ sft ^
Part II - 1740-1 800
Colonial Days
The Revolution
The Closing Century
♦ ♦ ♦
Prepared by
The McArthur Library
for the
City of Biddeford
1946
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Foreword
This second part of the "Stories and Legends
of Old Biddeford," contains both history and
legend. On the historical side it unquestionably
breaks new ground - for Biddeford, and possibly
for Maine, It is largely based on a study of
two old (and almost forgotten) York County courts.
For one of them, the remarkable Court of General
Sessions of the Peace, there is no modern
counterpart.
For forty-one years, from 1762 to 1803, those
courts held an annual terra in Biddeford, In other
words, they covered the Colonial days, the
American Revolution, and the transition from the
l8th to the 19th Century. Thus their records
offer a rich mine of Maine social history. It
is a mine that has been totally ignored by
Biddeford historians in the past, and no Maine
historian seems to have worked this particular
vein.
It is hoped that a third part of these "Stories
and Legends” can be later issued. Such a Part III
will cover Biddeford *s story through the remarkable
and eventful 19th Century. Particularly It will
cover the fascinating and colorful story of the
coming of the early French-Canadian pioneer
families to Biddeford. Miss Helene Thivierge and
others, have already helped the Library in the
gathering of material for Part III. 1
Dane Yorke
September, 19^6
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Stories and Legends
TABLE of CONTENTS
Chapter IV
When Biddeford was a Colonial Town
1. The Klng*s Highway in Upper Biddeford 41-43
2. The King’s Highway and the upper ferry:
a. Chrisp Bradbury gets a raise in rates
b* The first chaise drives through
Biddeford
c. Chrisp gets a beating and disappears
d* Elisha Allen takes over the ferry
3. Milestones appear on the King’s Highway:
a, Ben Franklin shows them how to set
up milestones 48
b, Jeremiah Hill sets them up in Biddeford 48
c, John Adams visits Allen’s tavern, and
hears an old lady talk 49
4. The Colonial innkeepers of Upper Biddeford:
a. Elisha Allen’s dim figure 50
b. Captain Daniel Smith and his wife
Rebecca 50
c. Rebecca marries Nathaniel Ladd 50
d. Rebecca feeds the Pepperrell
'• Royal" family 51-52
e* Nathaniel Ladd and jolly Dr. Cummings 53-54
f. The mock trial at Ladd’s inn 54-55
Chapter V
Other Glimpses of Life in Colonial Biddeford
1. Colonial inflation and distress 56
2. The sad English traveller 57
3. The French Neutrals 57-59
4,. 'How a Colonial toothache was treated 59
5. The Pirate and the Bleeding Curse 59-61
6. The slaves of Biddeford:
a. The indentured whites 61-62
b. The negro slaves . 62-65
(a)
44
45-46
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47-48
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Table of Contents (continued)
7* Nathaniel Ladd frees his slaves:
a. Nathaniel Ladd's remarkable will 66-6?
b* The widow Pepperrell and her sheep,
and black Pompey 67-68
8. The King's "broad arrow":
a. The story of the mast pines 69-71
Chapter VI
Revolutionary Days in Biddeford
1, Biddeford men served at Saratoga, and under
Washington at Valley Forge 72
2* V/hy few Revolutionary stories were preserved 73
3. How war came to Biddeford and Falmouth 73-75
4. Fear, famine, and inflation in the
Revolution 75
5. The British threaten from Bagaduce (Castine) 76
6. The false Armistice of the American
Revolution 76-77
7. The town tries to catch a spy 77-79
8. "The Bloody Freshet" of 1775 79-80
Chapter VII
The l8th Century closes
1, "Ten men may save the City": Biddeford votes
for the Massachusetts Constitution 81
2, The Hooper Inn:
a. "The St. Nicholas of Biddeford" 82
b. Three beds, half a table, and a
lawyer's office 83
c. What the customers bought 84-85
d. The cost of food, drink and lodging -
for man or horse 85
3, Biddeford' ife. first official map - 1795?
^a. The "Falls village" 85
"b. The "mill .brow" 86
c. The industrial beginnings of Biddeford 86
(b)
Table of Contents (continued)
4, The wild pigeons
5. The Courts of Biddeford:
a. Biddeford becomes a court town (1762)
b. Two unusual courts, and their wide.
jurisdiction
c. The courts "meet 'round"
6* How the King's Courts met freedom
7. The Courts after the Revolution:
a. Harsh punishments continue
b. Marquess Myers and his Gaming Cards
c. A bowl of punch and a mug of toddy
8. The Courthouse and the Court procession:
a. Jere.'Hill and the Biddeford courthouse
b. The court parade
c« Judge Rishworth Jordan leads the
procession in Biddeford
9. The Arundel witch-craze
10. The heresy trial of Jere Hill; its meaning
and some of its results
67-88
88
86-89
89-90
91-92
92- 93
93- 94
94- 95
95
96- 97
97- 98
98-101
102-106
An Afterword
A poet remembers Biddeford
107
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Stories and Legends
Chapter IV
When Biddeford was a British Colonial Town
It is not often remembered today that Biddeford was once
a part of the British kingdom. And not for just a few years. In
fact, from 1630 (when Richard Vines began the first permanent
settlement here) to the beginning of the American Revolution in
1775? the rule of England lasted l45 years. That is about as
long as from the death of George Washington (in 1799) to the
end of World War II and the atomic bomb of 19^5* And during
almost all of those 145 years, Biddeford men and women were
described as "liege subjects of our Lord the King" without
anybody wanting to quarrel much, or to fight about it.
For example in October, 1762 (just fourteen years before
the Declaration of Independence) a court of law held in the
house of John Gray which stood near the present office of the
Pepperell Mills. That York County court convened in Biddeford
under a formidable mixture of Latin and English as follows:
"York ss:
Anno Regni Regis Georgij Tertij Magnae Britanniae
Franciee & Hiberniae Ect., Secundo:
At his Majesties Court of General Sessions of the
Peace began and held at Biddeford within & for the
County of York on the first Tuesday of October,
being the fifth day of said month, Annoque Domini
1762."
And it is of further interest that at this same court a
Grand Jury indictment was worded in this way:
"The Jurors of our said Sovereign Lord the King
on oath: Do present that John Goodwin of Arrundell
in the said County of York, Bricklayer, at
Arrundell aforesaid for the space of three months
last past together hath Absented himself from the
publick worship of God on the Lords days, and that
he the said John was dureing all that time able of
body and not otherwise necessarily prevented from
attending, against the Law of this Province in such
case provided and in Evil Example to others."
40.
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Stories and Legends:
The King's Highway
Where today we talk of a national or state highway, the
people of those days (the true Colonial days of Biddeford)
spoke just as naturally of the "King's Highway" and meant the
same thing. The records of the old court of law show, in 1763,
this description of a road still in use in Biddeford:
"For the term of Twenty Years
and upward there was and yet
is a common King's highway
leading from Saco Falls from
the house of Elisha Allen,
Innholder in Biddeford, by the
Dwelling house of Nathaniel Ladd
to the township of Wells... used
for the subjects of the said Grctn
Lord the King, with their horses
Coaches carts and Carriages to go
and return at their will and
pleasure."
The inn of Elisha Allen stood at what is
now White's Wharf, The house of Nathaniel
Ladd had been built by Daniel Smith and stood
near what is now 26 South Street, close to
Jefferson. Thus we know that the old road
ran through parts of what are nov/ five
different streets ~ from White's Wharf to
Main, Adams, Crescent, South and Elm. But
none of those street names were known in
Colonial times. It was all one road - the
King's highway.
No one knows exactly when that King's
highway was first laid out, but it could
not have been much before 1730. The
reference to "Twenty Years and upward" in
the court record is significant because at
this same term of court another King' s
highway (from Scarboro to Saco) was
described as "Five Years and upwards",
while a really old road along the coast
was called "a common Antient King's
highway.’ r .from the time whereof
the memory of man is not to the
contrary."
It does not make that Upper
Biddeford road any older to call
it, as some have done, an Indian
trail. It may have been - but
an Indian trail and a white man' s road
/</n o S
Cfefh t <
r
strttT
-fo-r rc/erence j
4l.
bcf0
a'srtiX •(!?
» • .
aril el^le lo Xanollan b lo jIIbI aw tiaflW
(biolafcbxa ^0 axBfc IbIhoXoD etnl aili) «x«*> aao/ll lo aXqoa(?
•rll tn'sam Mb •\iiwfljXH a'lnl)!" aili lo xXXBVflBrt aa lai/t ajioqa
,£d^X nl ,wo/1a wbX lo fttsoo bXo aril lo tbtooBX arlT amaa
ibiolabbia nX aaif rtl XXiia b«ot b lo nollqXioaab alrll
»> •Jt '
eiaaY \lnawT lo mxaX arli xo*?"
tax fcna «aa aiait biBwqif bna
xawrf^Xrl noasaoo b aX
(Boxl alXal oob3 aoxl snXbaaX
^naXXA Br!alX3 lo aai/ori arlt
ait xd fbxolabbXa ni xabXoinnl
bbBi XainBrltflU lo aatforl jnXXXawC
baai/ ♦»*aXXaW lo qlrfanwot arlt ot
stoa(;ffy8 arlt tol
'’’"aaixorl xiailt rltXvi^XX arlt jbioJ
0| ot aaifllxxflO bna atXBO aadosoO
bna XXlw ilarlt ta irtx/tax bna
**.axu2BeXq
at tarhr ta boota naXiA artaiXS lo nat art!
XalnBitaH lo aai/orl arlT ♦IXBflW a’atlrlW won
boota bna rlttwa XatnaQ \d fltijd n99d barl bbaJ
ot aaoXo ftaexta rltito3 dS won at tarlw xaan.
baoi bXo arlt tarft wonX ew ac/rlT «rt08tellal»
avtl won axa tarfw lo atxeq rlsiroxrft nax
IxarlW a’atlrlW ruoxl •• etaaxta tnaxellXb
ti/3 .fflij bna rltaoS ^tnaoeaxO yamabA ^niaM
ni nwoml axaw aaman taaxte aaoit lo anon
arlt • baot ano XXa aaw tl ,8amtt XatnoXoO
i*9niX
a*BntX tarlt narfw xXtaaxa awoml ano oW
bXitoo tt Sad .ti/o biaX taxtl aaw xawrlfirl
arlt axolad rlaint! naad avarl ton
ni ••bxawqx; bns axaaY xtnawT** ot aonaxalex
ta aat/aoai tncotltn^ta at fcxoaax txuoo arlt
a’jntX xerltona txr/oo lo onat e*aa aXrlt
EFw (ot>a3 ot cxotxBoa rtioxl) x^^wrlsti
,••8bxswqt/ bna' ^XfcaY avt'^** aa badxioaab
taaoD arlt baox bXo xXXaaT a aXiiw
. a’jnlX tnaltnA a** baXXao aaw
loaxarlw amit arlt rooxl. •
arlt ot ton at narn lo xiomj^ffl arlt
".yiaitnoo
xaqqU tarlt aXan ton aaob tl
XXaa ot xabXo x^ baox bxolabbifl
natbnl na ^anob axa/l 90K>3 aa ytX
tirtf • naai avarl x*® .Xiaxt
baox i*na0 atirlw a bna Xiaxt nalbnl na
Stories and Legends:
were two very different things. The Indians of the Saco valley
had no horses or oxen ("Tame cattle," said an old York County
writer, "have they none, excepting Lice") and no wheeled
vehicles. They travelled on foot, in single file one behind
another, and thus an Indian trail was simply a narrow footpath
winding around and between rocks and trees. The white man
building a road, especially a King’s highway, cut down trees,
grubbed out stumps and rocks, laid logs over runs and brooks -
in short he built a road, noi a path or trail, and wide enough
for riders on horseback or for an ox-team. The only use an
Indian trail could be in such roadbuilding was to furnish a
very rough line or trace.
At any rate the King's highway through Upper Biddeford is
known to have been in use as early as 1730 sind its most
distinctive feature - the curious jogging curve now known as
Crescent Street - is probably still fairly close to the original
line of the road. There was a very good reason for that
250-yard jog in the highway. Colonial roadmakers always found
it easier to run a road over a hill rather than to bridge or
fill in a low or marshy piece of ground. This same King’s
highway, for example, crossing what was then known as "S^co
plains" and "Saco woods" (the relatively flat stretch of land
beyond Five Points, going toward Kennebunk) characteristically
swung over and along the low ridge on which the Webber Hospital
now stands (and that continues through Greenwood Cemetery)
rather than along the present line of Elm Street which was then
much lower*
As for Crescent Street, when the foundations were dug for
St. Joseph’s Parish Hall in 1939 (more than two centuries after
the King’s highway was built), the workmen unicovered a great
sloping ledge of rock whose surface had been worn smooth and
polished by running water. It indicated that once the present
line of South Street between Green and Jefferson, had been a
wet and possibly marshy drainage slope down which a brook
flowed into a large pond ( six to ten feet in depth) that
is known to have laid in the low land along what is now Center
Street. By making the jog (that is now Crescent Street) in the
king’s highway, the Colonial builders kept the old road on high
dry ground. Incidentally, it was even higher then than now. A
deacon of the old White Church wrote in his diary in April, 1843
that he and twenty others of the congregation had spent three
days blasting Wlth^.po^er "the Ledge in front of the Meeting
house... for the better accomodation of giting to it." And it
was about that same time (1843) that South was cut through from
Green to Jefferson. By that time Colonial days were long past.
It was just below that jog in the road that Daniel Smith
built his house (near what is now 26 South Street, near City
Square) and there in 1738 he opened the first inn in Upper
Biddeford. An entry in the ancient town records for that same
year suggests that not only was travel then coming from Boston
and Portsmouth, but had begun also from along the upper Saco
42.
oobZ •itt 1o MMlbitl •iff •iinlflt x^wr omS
^tfuioD iftoT Mo lui Mta •Ait”) imwo lo ••atoH on bad
baXaadv on Urn (HoXJ iiil^<7a9xa fOiKMi x^tiS avad* |iaXi*nr
baJt/M 9no tin ai^la nl t^ool ao ftallaaail vadT .aalaldaT
dia^Xool vonaii a xX<|Ma aaa liai^ nalbnX na aiida bna ^xeiiSotu
nmn aitda adX •aaat^ 6«ia idao*i oaavtad Nia hmn>xa inlbnlv
^aaatt nvob fuo a'lnll a xlXalaaqta |baoi a ^tbltad
« adootd bna amra aaxo afol 6lai .adaox teta aowia ii/o l>addtn|
. d^jioiia aMw bna «Xlaxi to d^aq a ion fbaot a tXXiid ad itoda ni
fia.aaif tXno aft •aaaX*xo na tol to daadaatod no atablt tol
a daliru/1 oi aav fnXMiadbaoi daoa nl ad bXaoo XIatt naXbnl
•aaatt to anil dii/ot t^at
«
al btolabbid ta^tf dmaotdd tavdild a^yoiX ad^ atat tna iA
XaoA a^l bna Of^X aa xXtaa aa aaa nl iiaad atad o^ nvoAd
aa nwoiDf woa attiia foXtloX auoXtuo ada • ati/Xaal atiaonlfaXb
XanX)Xto adf oS aaoXa t^tlal IXlda tXdadotq at « f—xfZ aoaoaatD
iadd tol noaaat boot T<ot a aav atadX •baot ada lo aiiXX
bnuol axawXa atadaaibaot XaliioXoO •xMf^Xd ada at tot btat*0?^
to atbXtd ol uadi tadtat XXXd a taro boot a mn oS taXaaa St
a^t^XX aoat aldt *bAiiott lo aoalt Xi^ataa to woX a at XXXI
oo#S* aa nofMCl nadX aav Xadv tnXaaoto ^aXiioaxa tol ^t^vdtXd
bnaX lo doiatAa XaXl tXavXaaXat adt) *aboov ooa3* boa *anXaXo
tXXaoXaa Xtaaoatado (diitfdanaa}| btavoi t^Xot ftanXo^ avXl bnotao
XatXqaoH taddaV add daXdv no atbXt voX add u^Xa boa taro t^ava
(xtadavaD boovnaatO diaotdd aaimXdnoa dadd kia) abciada von
nadd aav doXdv daatdd aXl lo anil dnaaatq add tnola nadd taddat
•tavoX dooa
tol t^b atav anoldabaciol add nodv ^ daatdt dnaaaatO tol tA
tadla aaXtt;dnoo ovd nadd atoo) 9t9l at XIaK daXtal a^d^aot •da
daatt a batavoow ftavd'TOV add fCdXXad aav xwdtid a*tnXX add
baa ddooaie ntov naad bad aoalti/a aaodv doot lo atbaX tnXaoXa
dnaaatq add aono dadd badaoXbnl dl •tadav tflXfirvrt x^ badaiXoq
a fiaad bad ^noatalla^ bila nvatO naavdad daatdb ddvoS lo anXX
dootd a daXdv nvob aqoXa atanXatb qdataa xX^Xaaoq bna dav
dadd (ddqab nX daal nod od vXa ) bnoq aytaX a odnX bavoXl
tednaO von aX dadv tnoXa bnaX voX add nX bXal avad od nvond aX
add nX (daatdb dnaoaatO von aX dadd) vot add inXdav ^ •daatdd
(ItXd no baot bXo add dqail atabXXod XalnoXoO and |TavdiXd a*tnXA
A •von nadd nadd tadtid nava aav dX atnadnablonl •onvott x^^
(^‘dX fXXtqA at x*>aX6 aid nX adotv dott/nO 9Stitll bio add lo nooaab
aatdd dnaqa bad noXdatattnoo add lo ataddo ad dadd
tnXdaaM add lo diiotl nX atbaX add” taiUM./ldl# tnXdaaXd axab
dl bnA ”«dl od tnXdXi lo noXdaboooaoa taddad add tol •••aai/od
notl iftootdd difo' aav ddsio3 dadd (C«^X) aald aaiaa dadd dcroda aav
• daaq tnoX atav axab XaXnoXoO aaid dadd x^ •noatallal od naatO
ddXna XaXnaQ tadd baot add at tol SoHS voXad dairt XX
XdXD laen ^daatdb ddooS von al dadv taan) aairod aXd dXXod
taqqU nX nnX datXl add benaqo ad 8£^X nl atadd bna (etairoS
a/aaa dadd tol abtooat nvod dnaXana add oX xitXna iiA* •btoTabbli
. nodaod totl tnXvoo nodd latatd aav xXno dofi dadd adaeftm taax
ooa8 taqqv add tnoXa <aotl otXa natad bad dod «ddcioaiadto<) boa
•S4
Stories and Legends:
valley. That entry of 1738 reads:
”Put to vote whether the Town would allow the
Highway the former Selectmen laid out from
Lieutenant Daniel Smith's to the upper end
of the Township, and it past in the Negative.”
The entry apparently refers to the present Hollis Road and upper
part of South Street. As the vote shows, there was then a road
of some sort along that line hut it was one not yet travelled
enough, or well built enough, to be accepted for upkeep by the
town authorities.
But over good road or poor road, the travel was coming down
the King’s highway past the inn of Captain Daniel Smith as he
was later known. Innkeepers in those Colonial days were men of
standing and substance, and Captain Smith served Biddeford not
only as constable, deer warden, and selectman, but also as
Biddeford 's dignified representative on the General Court then
(as now) the chief legislative body of Massachusetts. Captain
Smith died in 1752 and three years later his widow, Rebecca
Emery Smith, married Lieutenant Nathaniel Ladd (the lady seems
to have lik^men with military titles) who had been an officer
in the regular British army before he married and settled in
Biddeford in 1755* The inn then became known as Ladd's Inn.
Under those two men. Captain Smith and Lieutenant Ladd, it was
a famous landmark on the King’s highway for more than a full
generation. More of its story will be told later.
The King's Highway and the upper Ferry
One thing that drew travellers down the
road past the Smith Inn was a new ferry-crossing.
For one hundred years the only ferrying place
had been at the Narrows in Lower Biddeford
(where Ferry Lane still shows the ancient line
of travel). But about the same time that Daniel
Smith opened his inn on the King's highway, a
newcomer named Chrisp Bradbury began a ferry
across the river just below Indian (now Factory)
Island. Ferrymen in the old days were noted for
being very temperamental about their work. If
they were on one side of the river and saw passengers signaling
to them from the opposite side, they did not immediately hurry
across to keep the passengers from waiting. And when passengers
approached the ferry on the ferryman's own side, he would be
just as likely to make them wait until he had a full load. There
is evidence that Chrisp did not hurry too much, crossing and
recrossing the river in his big flat-bottomed boat. Perhaps to
make his passengers wait more cheerfully, perhaps to make a
little extra money from them, Chrisp opened a tavern by his ferry
He was licensed as a 'taverner ''in July, 1739.
J
/©fit®
. ml
i
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' Q
\A/i
Stories and Legends
There is an official (and amusing) record of Chrisp as the
first ferryman of Upper Biddeford. George Washington, in far-
off Virginia, was just a ten-year old schoolboy when Chrisp
Bradbury came into the York County court with this petition in
July of 17^2:
"Chrisp Bradbury of Biddiford, Innholder, complains
to this Court that he being ferryman near Saco Falls
in Biddeford aforesaid, that the fee for a single
person has been four pence Old Tenor and for a
Horse eight pence Old Tenor^ that the same is no
ways equal to the service and that other things
rise in their value. Wherefore the said Chrisp
prays that the fees of the said ferry may be raised
by this Court as shall seem good to the Court.
It is therefore considered and ordered by the Court
that the fare or fees for ferrage be from henceforward
one penny halfpenny each person and three pence for
Horse."
Two forms of money were then in use, one known as "Old
Tenor" and the other as "Lawful Money." That explains the
curious difference in the figures given in the old court records.
Chrisp made his petition in Old Tenor, but the judges gave their
decision in Lawful Money, worth about four times as much as Old
Tenor. Thus Chrisp was really allowed an advance of about one-
third in his rates - so that ferriage across the Saco was now
six pence Old Tenor per person, and twelve pence per horse.
There must have been plenty of talk and argument about inflation,
around the old ferry when Chrisp gleefully collected his new
rates .
It is also of interest that one of the nine judges making
that decision was William Pepperrell. But he was not Sir
William then. Three years later, Pepperrell was to win great
fame by the capture of the fortress of Louisburg - and it was
then that the English King (George II) made him a baronet. But
44.
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W^fci crfi*..*rye> ' >-),'' m
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njij ■'"'* V!« ‘aX
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.. . iS-t^'vi !>.. xii-a
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^ ■■ bTO'isfet>i€ nl
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^ X.':v;jt BX3W
, at sail
’* ^ ' "X " iyatq
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r-^h; e-sc ■’ : “ ^ .-tii •!
'\^> ‘ ■'■•■' ■ 9tif
'■ 7 :. . O Y/ttie-J 0;1C
,'• , -ifp'Vf b 1
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;.:::;’K.' mf - <1 ^ioi\
‘ ■ 'jIC rti :“>;-fI:*fc’q & . '. (i . ,
. 'ioiv - y;ioU i;j\fiiB.: i.l X_ ;.L _
' . '<JJ.htr\ ■ ‘^ feTfriO ^...iT •toni'^T
X.X ^ 8^ :u bir-’il
'rt -f ts.-^ i?i;o >Oi‘Ty'T xi«
lo ^rtmlq nce-: J^lsm eiadt
» * no^fiw ‘oio jr..i» fc/tuona
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^ walXXmf
■■•'■* !:“.• X a«aT
- ■ - ■ :,• /■' . If -^ad^ atili
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Stories and Legends
in 17^2 he was still plain William Pepperrell, Esquire.
Another interesting point in that old court record is the
fact that neither Chrisp nor the judges made any mention of
carriages using the ferry. No carriage is known to have
travelled the King's highway in Upper Biddeford until 17^5 and
oddly enough it was a minister who made that pioneering trip.
At this time the minister of Falmouth (now Portland) was the
Reverend Thomas Smith, a great traveller. From 1720 to 1788 the
Reverend Thomas faithfully kept a diary that has come down to us
as a valuable picture of his times. In that diary he frequently
speaks of Biddeford. In 17^0, for instance, he mentions
stopping overnight at Captain Daniel Smith's inn (the two Smiths
were apparently not related) and in 17^^ he was in Biddeford
again - courting and marrving the widow of Captain Samuel Jordan
of Biddeford. Then in 17^5 he made this entry in his diary;
"I set out with my wife in our Chaise for Boston."
The date of that entry was May 27th, and as the parson and
his wife drove toward the Saco the countryside must have been
lovely with the advancing Spring.
We wish some artist had left a picture of the arrival of the
parson's chaise at the ferry. Chrisp Bradbury's headquarters,
as "taverner" and ferryman, were on the eastern side of the
river below Cataract Falls. Against the background of the
wooded river bank and the tumbling falls, would be the horse and
chaise, the parson and his wife, the tavern and Chrisp, the
waiting flatboat - and Chrisp and the parson dickering over the
ferry fees. It must have been quite an occasion for Chrisp,
fixing the fee for this first pleasure vehicle to cross the
ferry. Did Chrisp charge just for two persons (the parson and
his wife) and one horse - a total of 24 pence Old Tenor? Or
did he insist on an extra fee because the chaise took up more
room in’ the boat than just two people riding one horse?
Unfortunately the diary of the Reverend Smith does not answer
those questions, although we can be fairly sure (knowing
something of Chrisp Bradbury) that there must have been real
dickering to make the fee "equal to the service." We also know
that the parson and his wife completed their chaise ride to
Boston (it took several days) and thus must have been ferried by
Chrisp across the river below Indian Island, to land at about
the foot of the present High Street where the King' s highway
struck the river. After landing they drove out past the Smith
Inn. Their passing must have drawn as much attention, and caused
as much talk, as the passage of the first automobile over that
same road more than I60 years later. In 1745 folks marvelled to
see a horse pulling a light carriage over the King's highway.
And about 1905 the folks in Biddeford were marvelling to see a
carriage go along without a horse, over the same route.
Incidentally, the parson and his wife must have had rough
45.
■K w c
Stories and Legends
travelling. The chaise was merely a small carriage body hung on
big leather straps over two wheels. It was easily overturned;
and it was certainly very bouncy. As for the road, what it was
like can be imagined from a description of the King' s highway
given in a Grand Jury indictment made twenty years after the
parson's pioneering ride, but at the same Spring season after
the frost had come out of the ground. The Grand Jury charged,
with feeling, that the King's highway was
. "Mirey, Rockey, Rooty, Rutty, Hilly, and in want of
divers Small Bridges and in great Decay for the
want of due reparation and amendment."
It certainly could have been no better when the parson and his
wife made their trip in 17^5* Which probably explains why the
next time the parson went to Boston his diary shows that he left
his wife home - and travelled himself by sailing vessel.
No stagecoach J^ravelled the King's highway through Biddeford
in Colonial times. Post-riders, on horseback, carried the mail
until 1787* There is a tradition that the private coach of Sir
William Pepperrell drove through, but this must have been after
Chrisp Bradbury gave up his ferry. Chrisp seems to- have had a
rather short career. In his time, the town of Biddeford took in
both sides of the river - covering all of present Biddeford,
Saco and Old Orchard. Thus Chrisp on one side of the river, and
Captain Daniel Smith on the other side, were both elected in
17^2 as
"the Men to take care that the Dear be preserved
according as the Law directs" (there were game
laws even thenl)
Chrisp was elected the next year as "Constable on the Eastern
side" (of the river), and in 17^7 he was chosen one of the five
46.
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Stories and Legends
Selectmen of the town.
As a Selectman for the town of Biddeford Chrisp again
appeared in court in April 17^8, accompanied by Rishworth Jordan,
another Selectman. They were defendants and they listened
solemnly while a "presentment" against the town was read
"for not being provided with a schoolmaster to
teach children and youth to Read & Write as the
Law requires."
Whereupon Chrisp and Rishworth, "promising to get a schoolmaster
settled for the future", were acquitted on paying (for the town)
the court costs of "Twenty Seven shillings."
With that case finished, Chrisp came once more before the
court and at the very same session. This time he appeared in a
new role - not as Selectman, innkeeper or ferryman but as a
"trader',* a description then much used for men who speculated in
land. Also Chrisp was now in the role of complainant, and his
complaint was against four young men of Biddeford - and the wife
of one of the four. He told the court that on a cold February
night that year, the four young men "with the aid and assistance
of the said wife":
"did disguise themselves by blacking their faces,
turning their Cloaths (clothes) and armed
themselves with Clubs and other Weapons"
with which they grievously beat and pummelled poor Chrisp after
dragging him from his warm bed, and out on the icy ground in
front of the house. In addition, said Chrisp plaintively, they
also broke "the glass windows" of his house - which seems to
have added greatly to his sense of in.iury.
With its blacking of faces and other disguise, this court
case of 17^8 is curiously suggestive of the famous Boston Tea
Party raiders of 25 years later. Also the fact that the court
declined to hear the case (advising Chrisp to try a higher
tribunal) rather encourages the suspicion that there v/as more
to the case than appeared in Chrisp' s complaint. At any rate
Chrisp seems to have disappeared from the Biddeford scene. He
is known to have moved to Newburyport where he died in 1753*
before coming to Biddeford he had lived in York, where he
married in 1737» He was licensed as a Biddeford "taverner" in
July of 1739, so that his curious career here seems to have
lasted Just about ten years.
Chrisp' s ferry was either taken over, or replaced, by Elisha
Allen about 17^6. Elisha made his headquarters on the western
side of the river at v/hat is now White' s Wharf. By 1750 he had
met with such success that he could pay twelve hundred English
pounds (more than ^>6,000) for a strip of land covering about a
47.
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Stories and Legends
half mile along the riverbank below V/hlte's Wharf. He built a
store, and then a tavern for which he took out a license in July
of 17p3- The ferry business ended in 176? when the first bridge
(a covered wooden iDridge) was built from White's Wharf to Indian
Island. The bridge was built, incidentally, over the violent
protests of a Colonel John Tyng to whom Elisha had shrewdly sold
his ferry. But Elisha was in favor of the bridge whofee Biddeford
end - maybe by good luck, maybe by good Elisha’s management -
came quite close to Allen’s Tavern at the foot of the King’s
highway. Incidentally, if Sir William Fepperrell's private coach
was the first to travel the King' s highway through Upper Biddeforc3,
then it must have been Elisha Allen who ferried that coach across
the river - because Sir William died in 1759 before any bridge
had been built on the Saco.
Milestones appear on the King's Highway
There were also no milestones on the King's
highway before Sir William died. Those, by
the way, came as a result of the enterprise
of Benjamin Franklin. In 1753) the year
Elisha Allen opened his tavern, Benjamin
Franklin was appointed Deputy rostmaster-
General of the Colonies. Characteristically,
Ben did more than just watch the mail. For
one thing, he took on himself the job of
improving the post roads with mileage markers.
He actually did much of the marking himself,
though he did not come as far north as
Biddeford. It is said "he drove over the. roads
which were to be marked by milestones, seated
in a comfortable chaise, of his own planning,
followed by a gang of men and heavy carts
laden with the milestones. Attached to the
chaise was a machine of his invention which
revolution of the wheels the number of miles
over. At each mile Ben Franklin halted, and a
which was afterwards set permanently."
The survey for milestones on the King's highway was made in
1765 by a surveyor named Miller. In October of 1767) Jeremiah
Hill of Biddeford was appointed by the court to put up stones at
the places Miller had marked. It is probable that one of these
places was on the highway near what is still known as Mile Brook.
If so, then the old brook undoubtedly marked the first mile from
Allen's Tavern. Just how many stones Jeremiah Hill set up, we
do not know. His appointment required
"that on one of the stones so put up in Biddeford
there be marked in Letters and Figures the Distances
from Boston, Portsmouth and Falmouth, according to
the said Miller's survey."
registered by the
the chaise passed
stone was dropped
48.
Stories and Legends
More than two years later (in January, 1770) the old records
show Jeremiah Hill collecting "Forty shillings for setting up
Milestones." Jeremiah and the times moved more leisurely than
now.
But that date of payment makes us sure that the new
milestones were in place when John Adams on horseback rode down
the King's highway in Biddeford in Jul^ of 1770. John Adams was
to be the .»econd President of the United States, but he never
even dreamed of that honor in 1770. He was then just a Boston
lawyer "riding circuit" in the King' s courts of law. And in his
diary, where he mentions this Biddeford visit, John Adams
unconsciously reveals how much he and the people still thought
in terms of English things. W^th three other lawyers, Adams
stopped at ^he home of James Sullivan (who had come to Biddeford
just the year before) which stood on the King's highway close
to the covered bridge and Allen' s tavern. A biographer of
Sullivan describes the visit as follows:
"After refreshing themselves with punch, then the
usual beverage, they all adjourned (from Sullivan's
home) to Alienas tavern to dine; and, when they had
finished their repast, Sullivan proposed to the party
a visit to an ancient crone in the neighborhood who,
from her great age and accurate memory of things long
past, was one of the wonders of that part of the
country. She was 115 years of age, having been born
in 1655 near Derry, in Ireland. She remembered events
in the reign of Charles the Second, having lived under
seven English Monarchs."
'fVe wish we could know more of this venerable old lady. Just
where she lived, how long she had been in Biddeford, and who her
family might be. It is probable that she was one of the group
of Scotbh-Irish settlers who came here about 1718 and who brought
with them the art of making linen, and knowledge of the white
potato. But unfortunately no other record of her has been found,
other than this visit of John Adams, James Sullivan, and their
lawyer friends. It is interesting to note, though, that where
now an aged man or woman might proudly give the names of the
Presidents in whose times they had lived, this old lady could
speak only of English kings - for in 1770 there were no national
Presidents, and no United States of America. And these are the
kings she remembered, with the years in which the people of
Biddeford and New England spoke of themselves as "liege subjects
of our Lord the King":
Charles II 1660-1685
James II 1685-1688
William and Mary 1689-1702
Anne 1702-171^
George I 1714-1727
George II 1727-1760
George III 1760-
49.
Stories and Legends
The Colonial Innkeepers of Upper Biddeford
That story of the lawyers' visit is the only one that has
come down to us from Colonial days, in which Elisha Allen's
tavern is mentioned. His period as an innkeeper went beyond the
Revolution, and lasted until 1783 when he seems to have left
Biddeford. No trace of him afterwards has yet been found. The
building which housed his tavern was later owned by a Captain
Samuel White for whom White s Wharf was named. But though
Allen's tavern was for thirty years (from 1753 to 1783) a
landmark and meeting place known far and wide throughout New
England, Elisha Allen himself is a curiously vague figure in
Biddeford annals. He never seems to have served in public office,
as did Captain Daniel Smith. Nor did he have interesting friends,
as did Lieutenant Nathaniel Ladd. During the Revolution he does
not seem to have been active on any patriotic committee, though
he was not a Tory. Apparently he was strictly a business man,
with no interest except business, who never achieved a character
and personality that made people remember him.
But Captain Daniel Smith, on the other hand, was obviously
a personality even though we have no stories of him. He came
here from Exeter, in New Hampshire, and married Rebecca Emery'
in 1719 • They had ten children and evidently prospered, because
when the Captain opened his inn on the upper King's highway
in 1738 he also paid that year the fourth highest tax in town.
When he died in 1752 he had accumulated several hundred acres of
land, three negro slaves, four horses, twelve oxen, seventeen
cows and calves, and twenty-four sheep. And although the
careful inventory of his estate shows five feather beds, it also
does not show any books and no chaise or riding chair as the
only pleasure carriages were then called. That is interesting
because the Captain was a real public figure (his public offices
are listed on page 43) and in several court cases is described
as "Gentleman", a term that in those days had a definite and
honored meaning and meant particularly a man of dignity and
substance. And his wife was also a personage.
Yet it is plain, from that inventory, that
the Captain and Rebecca must have either
walked or ridden on horseback when they went
anywhere. Undoubtedly Rebecca rode "pillion"
behind her husband, holding tight to him. to
keep from falling off the horse as they
jogged down the King's highway.
Rebecca and the Pepperrells
After the Captain's death, Rebecca Smith
kept on the inn and was licensed in her own
name as an innkeeper for the three years 1752,
1753 and 1754. Then in 1755 she married Nathaniel Ladd who had
just retired after service as an officer in the regular British
Pfl/fon
50.
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Stories and Legends
army. She was then 58 years old (her first marriage had been
at the age of 22) and thereafter she was known as Madam Ladd.
As Madam Ladd she was a noted Biddeford figure, and she is the
only woman to achieve a personal epitaph in the old Biddeford
town records. She died in 1786 (having outlived both 'her
husbands) and under date of January 27th that year the town
clerk of Biddeford made this formal entry in the town records:
"Departed this life at Biddeford in the 89th year of
her age, Mrs Rebecca Ladd a noted midwife in this
neighborhood. She had 10 children (3 alive), 48
randchildren (33 alive), 82 great-grandchildren
70 alive), 4 great-great-grandchildren (all alive)
Total l44,,,.. of whom 110 are now alive"
Incidentally, that unique entry was made by Jere Hill, Jr.,
who was then town clerk and a noted Biddeford figure of his
day. But it would hardly be suspected from that entry, that
the worthy Jere was himself one of the 33 living grandchildren
of Madam Ladd.
Just one known story of Rebecca Emery Smith Ladd has
come down to us. And since it deals with Rebecca and the
Pepperrells we are able to date the story as before 1759* the
year Sir William Pepperrell died. As handed down in a Biddeford
family the story runs:
"Madam Ladd always called the Pepperrells ’ the
Royal Family’ because of the style in which Sir
William travelled and the special attention he
required whenever he stopped at her inn. She
always made great preparations whenever she
thought he might be coming. But once he almost
caught her unawares.
It happened one day that food was low at
the inn, and Madam Ladd decided to make
her pork barrel and the beans from her
garden do for dinner. She gave one of
her slaves, named Black Kitty, a basket
and the two of them went out to the bean
vines, some way from the house, to pick
a mess of beans for dinner. Madam Ladd
had put on an old dress for the picking
and knew she would not be very presentable
if company should come to the inn. So she
kept an eye on the road while they picked.
In those days there were practically no
houses on what is now Main Street and from
the inn there was a good view down the
King’s highway almost to the ferry. All
Of a sudden Madam Ladd saw the Pepperrell coach
coming in its slow and stately fashion along the
51.
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Stories and Legends
highway, but still some distance off. Conscious
of her old clothes (and of the Pepperrell invariable
display of scarlet and lace) she threw up her hands
in dismay, crying 'Good heavens, what shall I do?
The Royal Family is coming and I'm not dressed for
them'. '
"Realizing that if she could see the Pepperrell
coach, then the occupants of that coach might also
be able to see her as she hurried back to the inn
•...well, the Madam knew a trick to get around that
dilemma. She told Black Kitty to keep on with the
bean-picking, and then she scouched down and crept
along behind the bean vines. When she came to the
edge of the patch she got down on her hands and knees
(and at one or two bare spots actually wormed along
on her stomach) to keep out of sight of the road till
she made the inn back door. She had just managed
to get inside and throw on another dress when she
heard the Pepperrell coach stop in front. But
luckily it was not Sir William and his wife who got
out. It was merely a footman in livery who came to
the door to say that the Pepperrells were going a
little further along the road just then, but would
be back in time for dinner. Things fairly flew for
a while in the inn kitchen then. • A young pig was
killed and roasted on the spit in the big kitchen
fireplace. Beans and other vegetables were gotten
ready, and cooked. By the time the Pepperrell
coach returned and the Royal Family came in, an
excellent dinner was ready - with Madam Ladd on hand
to calmly greet them. But inside the worthy Madam
was chuckling to herself. As she later used to say,
'There I sat in my best dress, fanning myself as if
I never knew what hurry was. And no one would have
thought that I had made my way from the garden on
my stomach to receive the Royal Family I"
The old inn on the King's Highway
Kc authentic picture of the Smlth-Ladd Inh has come -dowri
to us.- 'But -this typical'-Colottial'. innj'of the period shows
how.'it probably- lodkbd. ‘ •
52.
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fMtit bfWoiM So% of ilolil • ooepi flwbaM «XX»w*oo«
HSiw no <|ooJl of ^t^lH siooXfl bXol ort3 ojwiaoXlP
brui fftob boftoifobi ort* noilJ^ bno , |nl49lq[«»iio^
•lU ol oiifio ofit fHirfW •«•«!▼ niMNi odf bnlrloi fnoXo
••omi bno tbiiid tort no nwrob ioi rtoloq oii^ Jo o%to
lOoXo botnom tlXofiioii ofod to ooo mm)
Liif bool ofl^ to ffimlM Jo ftfo 000^ of {tioomofM lorf no
bo^Afioo toot alooB Mood mil otif ohoo oite
otU mifo OBOib totifotto ao oo^Hf bno oblsnl ^#1 of
fuB ofitoOJ at (fO^M ftoooo XX#iio<|<|of otIf b%MOd
fot o&M otiv gift bfu oolXXIV il8 fott Mam fk p^lMoul
of omo odo t^oTlX al nmmfooJ o
o fiilot non oXXonowt odf focif v^m ^
blaoo fmf ftmdf foot bool oiif tttolM ooHfotfk oiffil
OoJ woiJ %loXot iinlilT aiorwflb lot oall ok dooMod
' gov flo imiot A omilf oodofkM rmk odf ak olim o
mtiofkM old odf Hi Al<|8 oif ao Uf MOot Uu boHtd
moffoo oioo Moidmfo^or oodfo boo momoB oMOMiqookJ
xloiio^not oil onlX odf t$ oboMooo boo gibooi
- oo ffll •■00 nilog*l XoioH ofl^ boo boirtufoo dooco
baod ao bM moboU etXlw « t^ooi goo lomilb faolloono
mbaU xdf^oo odf obigfti fijB .modf Xooim ^«Xoo of
•fOg of bOMU oofol odo lA atxosloit of ffllXliOintO goo
ji go tXoeto oalnrmJ fggoib food xo fit log I oioftx*
oooif bXiroo OHO oo boA otoo x^ofl lofio oooif ooroa I
no oobiof offl iooit xow xo obom bort I lo<1i limiiorft
"tXXlob^ XoxoH oifl ooioooi of iteoiiotg xd
Xooffill g^itolO oifl ao ml iXo oitT
i . • »■
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mob omoO MOd mat bboX^dfUMb otif to otoiolo okfmdftm #9
boodo boAiOf odf tO’^tel AolmiOO'Xmlot^ okif- foB •oo of
tbdiioi xidodoxo fk .mod
Stories and Legends
The old inn and the mock trial
One other story that seems to be more than mere legend
has come down to us about the Smith-Ladd inn. It seems to
have first been printed in 1658 in the biography of James
Sullivan, and that is still the best account that has been
found. It specifically mentions Nathaniel Ladd as the keeper
of the inn and calls it Ladd’s Tavern. And because James
Sullivan figures in the story we can date it as having happened
between 1769 (when Sullivan first came to Biddeford) and 1776
when Nathaniel Ladd died. The probable date is about 1771 or
1772.
Before giving the story it is well to know more of
Nathaniel Ladd. How he became acquainted with Rebecca Smith
we do not know. It is possible that he was a friend of
Captain Daniel’s, because both men were born in Exeter, New
Hampshire, where (at a later date) Nathaniel Ladd’s grand¬
nephew (William Ladd) was to be famous as the ’’Apostle of
Peace.’* We have not been able t^^find any record of Nathaniel's
service with the regular British army, but Folsom records in
his History of Saco and Biddeford, in I83O, that in the British
army he began a close friendship with Dr. Donald Cummings who
had been born in Scotland and had come to this country as a
British army surgeon. So close was their friendship that
Folsom says that Ladd persuaded Cummings to also leave the army
and settle in Biddeford where in 1755 (the same year in which
Nathaniel Ladd married the widow Rebecca Smith) the worthy
Dr. Cummings married the widow Elizabeth Cole whose home stood
on what was known as the "mill brow’’ , the section along Smith
Street now occupied by the Saco-Lowell Shops. In Colonial days
some of the most respected homes in Biddeford stood in that
section.
But to come back to the friendship of Nathaniel Ladd and
Donald Cummings, what we really would like to know today is
whether Nathaniel found the Widow Cole for Donald, to attract
him to Biddeford, or whether Donald did his own finding - as he
most certainly did his own courting. Folsom, in his History,
speaks thus of the good Doctor;
"Possessing popular manners, and the reputation of
great skill in his profession, he acquired in a
very short time a very extensive practice. His
services were in requisition abroad as well as at
home, and aged persons in neighboring towns still
speak of. Dr. Cummings as the most distinguished
practitioner of former days. In his habits he was
social even to excess: cheerful and full of anecdote,
he inspired good humor and friendly feelings where-
ever he went. His death was the result of accident.
Returning late on the night of April i, 177^ > f*rom
a visit to.... Winter Harbour, he was thrown from
53.
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ti3^9l ^ - staa oi tflM« fAil x^oi% MO
^ ^i. .i'jil l7i^:ai*rOiiir8 9itS ^irM« ttf ai mM vaO
8» 1. viiaatfoU mdi til I al b%$nkv* kB%l\ Mad
098«i ce/* fiiil 1n£/O00« ^WKf IIf^“ al t^HS tol |ll8T|IXi^8
te^oi UA hbmd iAlnBfiSgy^ e r:o I ^11 MlUtaaqa ^I .bmiol
tMiA «xn^vi*~ si aXIaa Nia ruil ad^ lo
miU^ad 88 fi AiMb mo 8w t^o^a Attf.mi toti/fll aiaiIXii8
d^XlM (0tal8bMi 0S Alifid ^8*111 lUTlIlaS IMilfvv; AMWla^
ta X^X ^tfMa ftl a#Ab •Tdndatq MX .Oalii MaJ XaXaMiai iMio
•O^TfX
ta MM a# XlM •! St aiCf f^i-' I
HSimS uo9^dfi>ff d^'iw NffniAM&9A aMai^ ad vaH Xaxiiadtat
la 8 aaa Ad tadt a£dl^to<| il it *m<>n^ foa ot aa
aai fYataxI Hi inotf 9*X8W dXad aBMoad fc'lolMO iiiaX<taO
: T'bl>8i Xaloafl/aH is^aX • Sa) tiada tatldaq^H
la 8i;^3oqA" art^ ta etro.^rl ad ot Raa (bbal M.liXlfl) aad^aQ
• •XaJtoad^aM lo b^oooi trftilaJ aXda A^ad ^o« •aad at ^.aaaal
Mi tbtoaa*/ j<08Xol Sird iltXiiti ‘laXiiiat add rtdit aalMta
»f(i nl t iiis? •0{;8l f?X ^biolabbia bna oaaB lo aid
^■- 7 taoX'^'MO .-tCI rttlw qlrttbAsni a^oXa 3 -a|ad ad IMO
a tA vitficfoo 9lfli o:^ pi^oo hsd bna bn^Xiaa3 ei anatf iiaad bad
iAdi qXd!»tifieX^i liadi ?iiw atoXo oS •OMitAnk tpna lUiiiti
add arstX of.Xa od fa^iS exat aotXol
il^iffo ol XAAx •di; fv7X iii b'iolabbifi ol aXddaa Ma
Xddaw add (d^i!*i^ fioo9ds)i odd haHiaa Htai Xainaddai
Ooodt aood atoia oIoO ddadaslIS vobiw add bt»X*ita« tiAlmoBrO ^tO
ddiaS affoXa ooltoof: add Itla^ add aa monM aav dad# Xio
axab XaXnoX<>0 rl «aqod8 xla«aJ«oaa8 add OaXovaao woo daa*rdd
dadd fit ^ Molabblt nl aoMi badaafttl aaM add lo aooa
•ooXdoaa
toa MaJ Xaioaddall la oidabmidl add ad Mad aooa od dot
ii tabod wand od a7i£l 1-^wm xXXaat aw dado itoiiXooEfO bXaooO
daa^ta od .bXiinoa tol aXoO wobiW add bnwol Xalftaddai oaddaiiv
ad aa • mnlfiofl nwo aid bib bX»no<3 tsdladw *fo ibiolsbbit od old
ytttdalH aid nl cOoaXel »|nldiuuoo nwo aid bib wXniadwao dtao
itodooCt boot tdd lo eadd aMaata
lo goldgdOMt add boa liMimo taXMoq tnlaaaaaol*
a ol brxliff^oa ad .noxataloitt tiii si Xlldc daatf
alM •aaldoaicr aTlaoadva x^aw a a«ld dtodi itM
da aa XXaw ta b ^da rioldf^ii/pai nl amv aaalwwaa
IXIda lowod a^l'^^dsX^'fl ni Raoataq baaa b^ ^ r?od
badaltf^nrldilb d8oay>f1d ha aafflaiiiO Vi
aao ad adidad clri al . s^Bb ta®" i 'lo *5 i^i* J:dldaaH|
^adoboana lo 1X4/1 bna Itfliaaiio od Xalaoa .
•aoadw atnilaal tXbiit9X*il bna boo$ ad
>dnablooa lo dXjvaat add saw ddaab alH *d>aw ad tawa
AniXUg^^l 1 1 Xlt^X lo dd^ln add rto adsX mlottida^
•otI nwotdd aao ad «fifod<ia8 ladnit, . . .vj diala a
Stories and Legends
his horse on the shore of the Pool where his lifeless
body was discovered the following morning.”
A man can often be Judged by his friends and the Jovial
Doctor' s likeable nature, as outlined by Folsom, suggests very
clearly that Nathaniel Ladd was a social man too. Social and
sociable, with perhaps the dignity (when occasion required)
that his army service had given. When Folsom says that Dr.
Cummings was "cheerful and full of anecdote” he makes it very
clear that when the Doctor and Nathaniel were together of an
evening in the old inn parlor, there was laughter and good
stories and splendid fellowship. What a pity that Folsom
did not record some of the Doctor's talk.
So it is probable that Dr. Cummings was one of the company ,
at the Ladd inn, on the night the mock trial was held. It was
not merely a good company, it was also a distinguished one.
David Sewall, of York, was there, and also John Lowell of
Newburyport. Sewall and Lowell were later the first Federal
Judges appointed for Massachusetts and Maine, and Lowell's
son (Francis Cabot Lowell) was to be a founder of the New
England cotton textile industry and to have a city (Lowell,
Mass.)' bear his name. There was also James Sullivan whose
father "read Latin and Greek fluently until he reached one
hundred years of age”* The brother of James was to be one of
Washington's most distinguished generals, and James himself
was to be Biddeford's leader in the early days of the Revolution
a member of the Continental Congress, and later a Governor of
Massachusetts. Such men relished the company of Dr. Cummings
and Nathaniel Ladd. And no one can doubt that Madam Ladd,
and Madam Ladd's good table, was also part of the charm of the
5^.
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Stories and Legends
old Inn. It is not mere imagination to place Dr. Cummings as
part of the company at the inn at the time of the mock trial.
He knew well the lawyers and judges who came to Biddeford to
hold court, because from 1768 to 1770 the old records show
that the annual October term of the York County courts in
Biddeford was actually held in a room in Dr. Cumming’s house.
And when the location was shifted, in 1771 » it was to the
Ladd inn - which probably dates the mock trial.
Here is the account that has come down to us, as told in
1858 from the personal recollection of David Sewall who had
participated:
”The manners of the judges were not only decorous
but dignified, and the members of the bar were
courteous and well-bred; but in their familiar
intercourse there was little formality or restraint,
and their festivities were seasons of wit and frolic
and often sufficiently uproarious. When the business
of the term was nearly completed it was customary
for both bench and bar to assemble at the tavern for
a social meeting. On these occasions they constituted
a (mock) court among themselves, appointing one of
their number chief justice, for the trial of all
breaches of good fellowship during the term.
"(This year) the inferior court was sitting at Ladd*s
Tavern, there being no court-house (then) in the
place. John Lowell had arrived, late on Monday
evening, to attend its sessions and finding the inn.
full sought lodgings elsewhere, probably at his
friend Sullivan* s where he was always a welcome
guest. He left his horse tied to the post at the
inn, expecting it would be properly cared for; but
the landlord never gave it a thought. When, on Friday
evening a court was held for the hearing of all
omissions and commissions which had occurred during
the week, Ladd was called upon to answer for leaving
the horse unattended to - and defended himself on the
plea that he had received no orders to put him up.
The case was tried with becoming gravity, and the
judge, upon the evidence, sentenced Ladd to pay a
single bowl of good punch for his neglect, and
Lowell (was sentenced to pay) twice as much for not
taking better care of his own steed.
Incidentally it is interesting to recall that punch, the
famous social drink of Colonial times, was called "the drink
that is all contradiction” because, as the amusing old rhyme
went, it contained:
Brandy to make it strong.
Water to make it weak.
Lemon to make it sour.
Sugar to make it sweet.
55.
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Stories and Legends
It is also interesting (and revealing) that the standard measure
of a bowl of punch in those days was one quart. Thus the
court' s sentence of one bowl from Ladd, and two bowls from
Lowell, meant almost a gallon of punch for a treat to the inn
company. There can be no doubt that a very merry evening
followed that mock trial, in the old inn on the King’s highway
in Upper Biddeford.
Chapter V
Other Glimpses of Life in Colonial Biddeford
Much sentimental nonsense has been written about the
pleasures of life in the "good old Colonial days." But there
was also a dark side that is not so well known. As long as a
man or woman had health, a home, and work by which to earn
money, life was not so bad. Yet it was not by any means as
serene and carefree as it has been painted. The diary of the
Reverend Thomas Smith, the Portland parson, (see page ^5) »
is full of recurring plagues and near-famines, and complaints
against inflation such as this entry of 17^8;
"The difficulties of living daily increase. . .there
is no standard, but every man^ getting what (price)
he can*.... The prices of the neccessaries of life
do daily monstrously increase."
Four years later he wrote "It is a time of dismal scarcity of
Bread", and later (in 1761) he called it "a sickly dying
melancholy time" , while in March of 1763 he wrote of the arrival
of a shipload of corn with this comment, "people were reduced
to the last and extremest distress; scarcely a bushel of corn
in the whole Eastern country." Something has already been
said (page 44) of the difference between the money known as Old
Tenor and that called Legal Money in 1748. Old Tenor was then
so depreciated that it was worth only one-fourth as much as
Legal Money, But the parson's diary records that twelve years
later, in 1760, Old Tenor had sunk still further - so low that
one million pounds Old Tenor was worth only one hundred thousand
pounds sterling, a ratio of ten to one. And in 1766 the
Reverend Thomas Smith writes once more
♦♦There are great and universal complaints for
want of money."
. In the small towns there were no charity organizations,
no hospitals, and nowhere was there a Red Cross or Traveller's
56.
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Stories and Legends
Aid. A document found in the Massachusetts archives gives a
picture of what could happen to a stranger without money or
friends. The document mentions Biddeford and Falmouth (now
Portland); it is dated November 10, 17^8, and it will be
recalled that in April of that same year (see page 47) two
Selectmen of Biddeford bad appeared in court on charges of not
having provided a schoolmaster for the town. It was probably
some rumor of that vacancy that brought the stranger to Maine*
But this is the way the old document puts the story:
"The Selectmen of the Town of Falmouth humbly sheweth
that William Forde, an Indigent Person (as he Saith)
came from the west of England on the seventeenth
day of April last, to New Found Land & from thence
to Piscataqua, from thence to Boston where he lived
about two months. From thence he travailed to the
Eastward, as far as Biddeford, intending to have
Kept School there. But meeting with no Incouragement,
and being informed that there was a Mast Ship at
Falmouth, he Travailed from Biddeford to Falmouth
intending to get a passage home in said Ship.
"Said Forde having no money to pay his Passage with,
the master of said Ship refused to Carry him, upon
which said Forde being in a Strange Land, having
neither Friends nor money he was tempted by the
Divel to Kill himself, and was so far prevailed
with by the Tempter td Cutt his own Throat with a
Razor he had in his Pockett, which he Cutt very
Badly, this was done the Second Night after he came
to Town which was the second day of September last."
It was only after his attempted suicide that poor Forde was
given any attention - but only then on the expectation that
there would be pay for his care. And the purpose of the old
document was to induce the Massachusetts General Court to pay
for Forde a "bill of expense" amounting to 58 pounds 10 shillings
Old Tenor, which the Falmouth selectmen carefully translated
as l4 pounds 12 shillings and 6 pence New Tenor (or Legal Money).
As another glimpse of the times, there is the case of what
were called the French Neutrals. In 1745 the troops under
William Pepperrell captured Louisburg and Cape Breton but in
1748, when France and England signed the treaty of Aix la
Chapelle, both places were restored to France - to the great
disappointment of the people of New England. Then the English
began to settle in Nova Scotia, founding the city of Halifax
in 1749* As the Halifax colony grew it found itself sandwiched
between the French of Cape Breton and those in the section
known as Acadia. History says that the Acadians refused to take
part in the wars between France and England. They would not
serve France and they also would not take the English oath of
allegiance - which explains the name of French Neutrals given
57.
Stories and Legends
them. As so often happens, however, there were reckless young
men who did not share the caution or their elders, and it is
said that when (in 1755) the English soldiers captured a French
fort on the Bay of Fundy they found 300 young Acadians among
the garrison. It was soon afterwards that all of the Acadian
peop!l.e, young and old, were ordered deported - and they were
driven from their homes.
An Acadian family
facing harsh exile
in a strange land
This was the fam.ous tragedy on which Longfellow * based his
poem ''Evangeline.” In about five years a total of 6,000 men,
women and children were forcibly scattered among the American
colonies. About 1,300 were brought to New England and two
different shipments are believed to have come to York County.
How many people were in the first lot sent, is not known. But
the Massachusetts State Archives shov; an official document of
1760,' by which 6l of the unhappy deportees were assigned in
York County. Three of these, a man and wife and infant child,
were made public charges of Biddeford, as follows:
"The Committee to make a division of the French
people in the County of York, late inhabitants
of Nova Scotia, into the several to’vvns within the
said County, - beg leave to report they met the
17th of July, 1760, and made the following
division .
"Biddeford: Claud Boudrin and wife, with
one child
"Scarbourer (Scarboro): Joseph, John, Mary
and Margaret, children of
Claud Boudrin
It will be seen that the division broke up a family of
seven, and four children were completely separated from their
parents. That cold-blooded separation of families was another
characteristic of the day. In this same York County division
another family (of nine) was broken up between Wells and
58
•IMT x^siS bm tiUoffb •wr bn* iiwot f«4909
flloil iul6«^ ai
•lij» (fat#d lAlot)
baml •vuiita • ui
/
till batatf ifiilrlv ao rb9%^^n$ atfoatl nfi$ nm ilrlT
i«Mi OOO^h \o Xaiat a at^at tirMa al
AaalaMA aif# fAMa bataitaaa ttav aaafeXIila boa itaMii
ova Iiaa taaXi^:^ ts^ll oa aiffoot^ a^iov OOCfX aw^A •aoliroXoa
•^VBod jitoT oa avoa o^rnif oa bavailad ata oanvvoliU ; avataUXb
asm *motui aoR ai ^ai^t aoX a«^li ofta ai nav ax^^it xofta vo^
to aiiavcioob Xoialtio aa volt aaaX<fotA aaaas laaaiodoaaaaH aiia
aX baafisia atav aaaato^ioA aiia to rfax.ia fd yOd^l
^XXHa anatal baa ativ boa aaa a .ato'fa to aaiAT .taavoO AtaY
tavoXXdt aa «biotabtX€ to aafYailo aXXtfvq abaa aaov
ffacaiYt aHa to aoXtlalb a aAaa oa aatllmoO arfT*'
aaaaaiiadoX aaaX ^tnct to xfnuoO 0HS al oXooa^
oaa MtiSlw umoS XatoToa o/ta ifnl lOiaood 0000 to
ofia aoa x<Mta atooot oa ovooi ^
fatvolXa^ ofia aboa bm ftXvV to riatX
• . voiaXvlb
ffaXv fOthi baa nXtbtfof bvoXd ibiotabblf*
bXXitO 0£K>
taaV fOilot t(cncdtaad) tawocHaad*
to aatbXXila «aota|ioH baa
niztiioiL btMl^
to tXXffiat a ov aiootf noiztxlh arta aaiia aaaa ad XXXv SI
tXarta aK>tt boaatafat jIaaaXovoa atav aatbXXdo timt baa .aataa
todaoaa aav aaiXtinat to rtolfataoaa babooXd^bXoo aaift •ataatof
aolalaXb iNoY aaaa atria al .xa* odt to oXaaltoaoatoila
baa aXXa; ^aovaod 00 vMotd ^av (oaia to) x^taat tariaoaa
Stories and Legends
Berwick - ^ne father, motner aiid live children being assigned
to Berwick while two other children (both girls) were sent to
Wells. No record has been found of how long the Boudrins were
kept here, nor Just what their experience may have been. That
it was not happy, goes without saying. These deportees were
treated and handled as paupers in the various towns, and there
was complaint in some towns that more v/ork could not be gotten
out of them* Most of the French Neutrals were allowed to drift
back to Canada after its final conquest by England in 1762 but
they must have taken with them (especially the children) many
bitter memories of their enforced stay in Colonial New England.
It is only fair to add, however, that the French Neutrals v/ere
not treated any differently from New England’ s own native
paupers. The times were very harsh for the poor*
Even medical science was harsh and bloody, by modern
standards. Vile-tasting pills, purges and bloodletting, made
up the doctor’s stock in trade. It is known today that George
Washington died prematurely - because he was **bled" excessively
by his doctors. Even a toothache met with strange treatment,
as is shown by this quotation from a magazine article of 1778 i
"If the decay be not too far advanced; that is if
it be not rendered useless simply as a tooth, I
would advise that it be extracted, then immediately
boiled with a view to make it perfectly clean and
also destroy any life there may be in the tooth.
Then it may be restored to the socket."
That article was not written by a quack; it did not refer to
dental practice in some backwoods settlement. It appeared in
a leading English magazine (The Gentleman's and London
Magazine of April, 1778) and it was written by the King's own
dentist. Incidentally, among other choice bits of treatment
noted by this man was the use of powerful acids for "burning
the nerve", the applying of "blisters" (fiery plasters)
behind the ear "to divert the pain", and finally the naive
advice that:
"To burn the ear by hot irons has sometimes been a
successful practice, and has relieved toothache."
If the King of England in his palace, received such treatment,
then what must have been dental conditions in the small
Colonial village. And there were then no anesthetics, no
deadeners of pain - not even for a King.
The Pirate and the "Bleeding Curse"
Another aspect of this darker side of Colonial life is
revealed by an old legend of Biddeford Pool. Just how old
the legend is, we cannot tell. It seems to have first been
Stories and Legends
referred to in print by John
Locke, of an old Biddeford
family, who apparently drew
upon boyhood memories of family
talk when he wrote about 1880
of
**The terrible tale of the
pirate Melcher’s bleeding
victims, whose dying prayers
brought upon his posterity the
'bleeding curse’ which caused
so many of them in Biddeford
to bleed to death from the
scratch of a pin."
In 1926 Miss Fannie M. Hackett, member of still another
old Biddeford family, wrote out the legend as she remembered her
mother telling it:
"There was a shipwreck. A boat was lowered and filled
with men, one of whom was Melcher. A man struggling
in the water wanted them to take him aboard. They
refused, thinking his added weight would swamp the
boat. He clung to the side of the boat; they could
not pull his hands away, and Melcher grabbed an ax
and cut off his hands at the wrists. As the man
sank from the side of the boat he pronounced a curse
upon Melcher • that he and all his descendants should
bleed to death. Since that time everybody who. had
Melcher blood has died that way."
It will be noticed that while only one of those versions
calls Melcher a pirate, yet they both agree that the incident
involved a shipwreck, and that a family was afflicted with the
hereditary male disease known as hemophilia - popularly called
"the bleeding sickness." Incidentally, a somewhat similar
legend is told in the Libby family, but in that case the taint
is laid to intermarriage with the descendants of a sailor named
Lassell.
As to Melcher' s being a pirate (if he were one) there is
no record of anyone by that name among the known pirates of the
New England coast. The legend somehow suggests that he may
have been what was called a "wrecker" ( a man who preyed upon
wrecked vessels) - and in Colonial times the line between
pirate and wrecker was often hard to drav;. As late as 1752 the
British Parliament was forced to pass a law making it a crime
punishable by death "to plunder any vessel in distress... to
prevent the escape of any person that endeavors to save his
life... to wound him with intent to destroy him... or to show
false lights (on shore) in order to bring any ship into danger".
Many dark tales have come down of ships being decoyed by false
60.
Stories and Legends
signals on to rocky shores, to be wrecked and plundered. And
needless to say, the wreckers were not anxious to have any
witnesses survive among the crew and passengers of the doomed
ship. Because these wreckers preferred the dark of the moon
for their work, they are traditionally known as **mooncussers" .
It has been repeatedly and strenuously denied that any such
things were done on the lonely shores of Cape Cod, or among the
even lonelier coves of the Maine coast - but still the stories
persist of the "mooncussers” . In fact, a sea captain once
remarked in the old days that he would much rather take his
chances in a wreck on the wild and cannibal Fiji Islands, than
he would on certain parts of the coast of Maine.
At any rate, whether Melcher was a pirate' or mooncusser,
whether he really wielded his axe on a man struggling for life
in the sea, no one can say today. But it is still sometimes said
in Biddeford, when a man is known to be a bleeder, that he
"must have Melcher blood."
The slaves of Biddeford
Also dark in the Colonial picture was the fact of slavery.
It existed throughout New England, and records recently
discovered show that Biddeford had its share of slaves. There
were two forms of slavery known here. First there was the form
known as "indenture" in which a man, woman or child was sold
into virtual slavery for a limited time. These "indentured
servants", as they were known, were white persons. For a few
Indians, and for many blacks, there was the second form known
as chattel slavery that lasted for life - the type of slavery
that finally caused the great Civil War.
The first form of slavery (indenture) worked this way. A
man or woman in England, wishing to come to America but too poor
to pay for transportation, might arrange with the captain of a
sailing ship to be sold on arrival in this country so that the
captain could recover the cost of the voyage. The average cost
was twenty pounds (about $100) and the average length of
slavery needed to pay that cost was four years. An advertisement
in a Boston newspaper of 1729 is
typical:
D. ' 'Jjir \ ! §1/
^ -1 i-tj( ii \'rv-v:
White men for sale'.
"To be sold... a parcel of
White Servants, both Male and
Female, lately arrived from
Europe. Their time from 4 to
11 years, and are to be seen
on board the Vessel at Long
V/harffe."
To make that advertisement
clearer, the reference to "their
time from 4 to 11 years" meant
Stories and Legends
that these white men and women would be sold for sums that would
put them in servitude for from h to 11 years.
It was not only immigrants who were sold that way. Prisoners
of war were thus sold. A man or woman who had fallen in debt, or
who badly needed money or support, could sell themselves. Parents
could sell children (of any age) and one of the horrible features
of the indenture system of Colonial times was the traffic in
kidnapped children - kidnapped in one country or section and
sold to unscrupulous buyers in another. It is true that
indentured servitude was supposed to be for only a definite term
of years, but a harsh or greedy master could readily find ways
for prolonging the servitude. As an example there is a case
at Berwick, in the old records, in which an indentured man was
convicted of **abusive carages toward his master and Mrs." He
might easily have been 'deliberately provoked by that "master and
Mrs" into doing something to justify such a charge. At any rate,
in this Berwick case the indentured man was sentenced to be
whipped ("thirty lashes upon the bare skin") and made to serve
that- "master and Mrs" for enough more time to work out his fine
of 7 pounds 10 shillings, as well as the time he had spent in
jail awaiting trial. That sentence certainly added two or three
years to his servitude - and no one should be foolish enough to
imagine that the "master and Mrs" made those extra years easy.
It must be repeated that those indentured servants were
white. They were men, women and children of the same blood and
race as their masters and mistresses. Yet a modern historian
comments:
"They were made to realize that they were not freemen.
Any who had been unfaithful, negligent, or unprofitable
in service, even though they had been ill-used, were
not to be dismissed from their contract until they
had made satisfaction according to the judgment of
the authorities."
If in desperation an indentured servant in Biddeford, or
elsewhere ran away, he or she could be advertised for and
reclaimed by his master like any negro slave. In fact, in the
advertisements in the old Colonial newspapers it is often hard
to tell whether the runaway was black or white. For one thing
the word slave was not much used in Colonial times. Black or
white, held in chattel bondage for life or under indenture for
a limited number of years, both classes still were called by
the same name - servant. Roger Williams, famous leader for
religious freedom, owned black and white "servants." So did
William Penn and George V/ashington. It was the custom of the
times, and even the Declaration of Independence and the American
Revolution did not do away with it.
As for negro slavery, it was far more common in Biddeford
in Colonial times than has been previously realized or admitted
62.
Stories and Legends
by Biddeford historians. There is, for instance, no mention of
slavery in Folsom' s History, and yet at the time that Folsom
wrote that History (I83O) there were colored men and women
living here who had been slaves in Biddeford or who were the
sons and daughters of Biddeford slaves. But the truth is that
when Folsom wrote, the great struggle over slavery was beginning
between North and South - and New England people were trying to
forget that New England had once been an active slave-trading
center, or that slavery (even though far milder than Southern
slavery) had ever existed there.
The black slaves of Colonial Biddeford
seem to have been mainly house-servants
rather than field hands. The census of 1764
showed 116 families living in Biddeford, and
a total of 627 whites and 12 negroes. When
it is remembered that slaves were then so
expensive that only the well-to-do could
afford them, that seems a fairly heavy ratio
for a Maine village. Pepperellboro (Saco)
had at the same time only 2 negroes against
536 whites.
The first Biddeford slave-owner of whom
a record has so far been found, was Captain
Samuel Jordan, Indian fighter and merchant,
whose home (now known as the Goldthwait House)
still stands at Hill's Beach. Captain Jordan
died in 1742 - the year that Chrisp Bradbury
was raising the rates at his ferry (see page
44)- and the inventory of his estate includes
this interesting list of property, with the
values given in "bills of Old Tenor"?
" 1
Scarlet Jacket & Breeches
value
8
pounds
1
Moose Skinn
n
5
It
1
Negro
ti
20
It
1
pair of Oxen
n
35
It
1
Rone (roan) Horse
II
50
ft
The fact that the negro slave was valued at less than half the
worth of the horse, may indicate that the negro was either very
old or (more probably) very young. It was the work to be gotten
out of them - negro or horse - that made the basis of value.
The next record of slaves found in Biddeford occurs in
the inventory of the estate of Captain Daniel Smith who died in
1752 - the year in which George Washington reached his 20th
birthday, aind the same year in which Benjamin Franklin flew his
kite and discovered that lightning v/as electricity. The three
negroes shown as Captain Smith' s property were undoubtedly used
as servants in the old inn on the King's highway. Probably
one was a hostler or stable hand while another may have been
63.
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Stories >and -Legends
the ”Black Hitty'* who helped pick the beans for the "Royal
Family’s" dinner (see page 5l) • In the Captain's estate the
negroes were listed along with other livestock as follows:
•
"To 2 Negroes 133 Poiinds 6 Shillings 8 Pence
To another Negro 26 " 13 " 4 "
To 12 Oxen 78 " 13 " 4 '»
To’ 10 Cows 36 " 0 " 0 "
Why two negroes should be valued at an average of 66 pounds
each (between $3C>0 and $400) while another was only 26 pounds
(about $125) is hard to say. But it was probably another case
of either extreme age or extreme youth.
Even more Interesting is the Inventory of the estate of
Jeremiah Hill, Senior, who died in 1779 - a year when the
American Revolution was not yet won, and when the Reverend
Thomas Smith of Falmouth was complaining in his diary that
coffee was $8 a pound, and tea $19, in "Continental currency"
of course. Jeremiah Hill, Senior, was a son-in-law to
Captain and Rebecca Smith, having married their daughter Mary
in 17^6 and the wedding celebration was probably held in the old
inn on the King’s highway, Mary’s home. Jeremiah had also
been Biddeford's representative in the Massachusetts General
Court for the years 1770, 1771 and 1772. And he was a leader
in the old Pool Road church still standing. Thus the added
interest of his inventory which included the following:
" 1 Pew on the lower floor in the
Biddeford Meeting House 200 Pounds
1 ditto in the Gallery ditto
(the same Meeting House) 80 "
1 Negro Man, named Dick 250 "
1 Yoke of Oxen, 7 years old 285 ”
1 Ditto, 6 years old 260 "
Blue Broadcloth Coat & Waistcoat 60 "
Pair Black Breeches 20 "
The Biddeford appraisers of that Biddeford estate dignified the
negro man by at least recording his name. But in money value
they tacitly set him down as worth only a little more than three
good suits of clothes - and as less than two church pews or a
yoke of oxen. Our Colonial forefathers were obviously not as
conscious as we are today, of the difference between property
rights and human rights. A slave, even in New England, was
property first, and human second.
Through an entry in the old town records of Biddeford, we
know the names of two other colored people who v/ere probably
Colonial slaves. The entry, dated July 25, 1778, reads:
"Cato & Cloe, Negro man & woman, both of Biddeford,
intend Marriage »t
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Stories and Legends
Also about the year 1785 there was a negro fisherman who lived
with his family at the Pool. He was widely known as "Black
Peter" and his name is so written in an old account book of that
period. Black Peter had undoubtedly been a slave. Thus we have
definite proof of at least twelve Biddeford slaves of Colonial
days, counting the four named in the will of Nathaniel Ladd
which is quoted below. Of those twelve we know the names of
eight - Dick, Cato, Cloe (Chloe), Peter, Scipio, Bess, Patty and
Dinah, There was also Madam Ladd’s "Black Hltty." It will
be noted that they had no family names - they were named like
horses or cows.
How a slave
was dressed
in Colonial
Biddeford
Nathaniel Ladd frees his slaves
I
Something has been told already of Nathaniel Ladd ( see pages
53 to 55)* But just recently there has been discovered an old
legal record that makes Nathaniel Ladd one of the most interesting
and distinguished figures in Biddeford and Maine history. At
the time Nathaniel Ladd lived, Maine was a part of Massachusetts
(and remained so until 1820). Therefore slavery ended in
Biddeford when it did in Massachusetts, and the date was 1783 •
In that year the Supreme Court of Massachusetts ruled that the
clause in the State Constitution, adopted in 1780, which read
"all men are born free and equal" - was a clause that applied
to black men and women, as well as to v/hite. It is worth noting
that the author of that clause was the same John Lowell who
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Stories and Legends
just about ten years earlier had been paired with Nathaniel Ladd
before the amusing mock court on that merry evening at the old
inn in Biddeford (see page 55). And an active supporter of
Lowell in that freedom clause was James Sullivan, Biddeford’ s
famous Revolutionary figure.
It is also interesting that while Nathaniel Ladd made the
will that can now be quoted, it was James Sullivan who wrote
that will for him. And it may very well be that the will was
the result of discussions held by Sullivan, Lowell and Ladd
before the old inn fireplace in Biddeford. This is the way the
old document reads:
”In the name of God Ameni I, Nathaniel Ladd of
Biddeford in the County of York, Gentleman, being
of sound mind and memory though laboring under many
diseases of body which I apprehend will soon put an
end to my natural life, and thinking it my duty to
make, adjust, dispose of the external things
wherewith I am blest, do make and ordain this my
last will and testament.
And Whereas, I have heretofore purchased a Negro
Woman named Bess and a Negro Man named Scipio, and
the said Negro Woman hath had born of her body two
female children, the one named Patty and the other
Dinah, and my Will is to set them free from that
Servitude whereunto the laws of the Land obliges
them: I do therefore in the first place give and
bequeath to the said Bess, Scipio, Patty & Dinah
and each of them severally and respectively their
Time and Service during their natural lives, and do
hereby Will and Order that they and each of them
shall be set free and be at their own disposal
respectively .
And I do in the second place give unto the said
Negro Man in consideration of his good Services,
a Yoke of Oxen which. I now have, and my Gun, and
my every day Cloaths (clothes).
Also I give & bequeath unto my Wife' s Grand -Daughter
Margaret Smith one Feather Bed, one Cow and Six
Chairs.
Also I give and bequeath unto my Wife, Rebecca Ladd,
one third part of all my Personal Estate not herein
disposed of . . . ”
That will of Nathaniel Ladd's is one of the most
noteworthy and remarkable documents in Biddeford annals. It
was witnessed by James Sullivan, Dr. Aaron Porter and Robert
Edgecomb Nason, who watched while Nathaniel Ladd (obviously
in his last illness) signed his name. The date was January 21,
1776 - six months before the Declaration of Independence, and
66 .
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Stories and Legends
seven years before Massachusetts freed all slaves (the second
State In the Union to do so) . It was eighty-seven years before
the great Civil War ended all slavery in this country. Nathaniel
Ladd died within a few months but he left, in that will, a
magnificent monument behind him. Not only bad he freed that
family of slaves, he had also taken care to give them a start in
freedom by providing the man, Scipio, with a gun (to hunt and
shoot game for food) and an ox-team with which he could do
hauling, farming, or other work to earn money. Nathaniel Ladd
is a man of whom Biddeford can well be proud.
It may sharpen that pride to quote another legal document
of the same time, and one that shows very different treatment
of a negro man. It is also interesting as involving Lady Mary
Pepperrell, widow of the famous Sir William and part of what
good Madam Ladd used to call the Royal Family. The document
is the record of a York County trial, held in York in August
of 1775 - six months before Nathaniel Ladd signed his will,
and four months after the battle of Lexington. The battle of
Bunker Hill had been fought only two months before this
court record was written, but the wording would certainly never
suggest that a King had begun to lose his colonies. Or that
any spirit of freedom was in the air. This is the document to
contrast with Nathaniel Ladd's will:
”Be it remembered that David Sewall, Esquire, attorney
for the Lord the King for this Term, being present
in the Court of General Sessions of the Peace .. .begun
and held at York.... in the fifteenth year of the
Reign of his Majesty George the Third, of Great
Britain, France and Ireland, King. Defender of the
Faith etc., Annoque Domini 1775> in hi.s own person
gave the Court to understand and be informed that
one Pompey, a negro man of Kittery in said County,
labourer, did with force and arms on the twenty-second
of July, 1775, at Kittery aforesaid. Steal and Purloin
two young Sheep .... said Sheep being then the property
or owned by the Lady Mary Pepperell of said Kittery,
Widow, and of the price of six shillings and eight
pence each, against the Peace of the said Lord the
King, his Crown and Dignity, and the Statute of the
Province of the Massachusetts Bay in that case made
and provided. Whereupon the said Attorney prays the
advice of this Court on the Premises, and that the
said Pompey nov/ here in Court may answer to the said
Lord the King thereon. And the said Pompey, being
here present in Court, pleads Guilty.
"And after a full hearing the Court are of opinion that
the said Pompey is Guilty; and therefore ordered that
he pay unto the said Lady Mary Pepperell the s\m of
thirty-six Shillings, it being the threefold Damages.
And it appearing to the Court that he is unable to pay
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Stories and Legends
the same, ordered that the said Lady Mary Pepperell
or her Agent may dispose of him to any of his Majesty's
liege Subjects for the space of four months in Service;
and also to receive ten Stripes on his naked Back, and
pay Costs taxed at twenty Shillings and two Pence and
stand committed until Sentence be performed."
It must have dazed the poor Pompey, listening to that somber
charge (after all the excitement of Lexington and Bunker Hill,
whose news had come with galloping, shouting post-riders) - well,
poor Pompey must have wondered if somebody had not blundered in
linking up the taking of two young sheep with "the Peace of the
said Lord the King, his Crown and Dignity." That document is
not quoted to show how a negro was treated in those days; a
white man, as the old records show, would have been treated just
the same - been whipped, made to pay three times the damage, and
sold into servitude to pay the debt. But it does show clearly
how a poor negro could fare in freedom, and v;hy Nathaniel Ladd
was so careful to provide Scipio with a gun and yoke of oxen.
Whether the unlucky Pompey had stolen the sheep for food, or to
get needed money, v;e do not know. But the Lady Mary Pepperell,
through her agent, certainly took her thirty-six shillings for
the sheep that were worth twelve.
That old record is also interesting from another angle, as
showing how old ways of thought and action persisted in spite of
war and talk of rebellion. Within a year the British troops
were to march out of Boston, never to return, with their bands
playing the tune "The World Turned Upside Down." But it took
longer than that to make many realize that the Colonial days of
Biddeford and Maine and Massachusetts - the rule of King and
Parliament over this country - were done forever.
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The King's "Broad Arrow"
It is pleasant to turn from that
darker side of Colonial life, to the story
of the mast pines and the mast trade which
sprang from the need of the English navy
for the tall white pines of New Hampshire
and Maine. Many a great English warship
of Colonial days, boasted of masts made
from the pines of the Saco Valley.
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The early English explorers were all
amazed by the huge pines found here. Some
of these magnificent trees were six feet
in diameter, nearly nineteen feet around,
and almost two hundred feet tall. One
such tree reached England in 1666 and was
so enormous that an old record preserves
the fact that even after that tree had been
trimmed and rough hewed, it still contained
almost 30 tons of timber. Such a tree was
of course exceptional, but even the
average tree reached a height of 125 feet,
was about 10 feet round at the base, and
represented a growth of 300 years. Small
wonder that the pine forests of Maine and
New Hampshire became the chief source of
masts for the King's great wooden warships.
So prized were the masts that they
made, that all pines more than two feet in
dlameterXat a point twelve inches above
the ground) were declared the property of
the King and could not be cut without
special permission. Royal Inspectors went
through the woods, marking every tree of
that size (or larger) with the King's
"broad arrow". The mark was cut in the
bark with a sharp axe. It was made with three cuts of the axe -
two slanting, one perpendicular • and roughly resembled an arrow
head, which explains its name. Anyone cutting a tree marked with
the King's "broad arrow" was subject to heavy penalties - if
caught. But few were caught, though many pines were cut. There
was something, about that arrogant King's mark on a fine pine that
roused people s ire and made them find ways of getting round, and
evading, an unpopular law just as they have done many times in
our history. Once or twice there was open resistance, and men
disguised as Indians took good timber away from a King's inspector
who had seized it at a sawmill because it measured more than two
feet in width. These hated inspectors are said to have gone into
the homes of the people here, in search of floor boards and doors
made of planks two feet or more in width. Such a plank was
69.
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Stories and Legends
taken as clear proof that a mast pine had been bootlegged (as we
would say today) and the King's "broad arrow" disregarded. Which
is why, it is said, that no Saco Valley home, built before the
Revolution, will be found to contain boards more than twenty- three
inches in width. The sawmills that secretly cut the great pines,
were careful to trim all boards just under the twenty-four inch
width. After the Revolution, when the King's "broad arrow" was
just a curiosity, such trees were cut without stealth. It is
from that later period that wide floor boards, and doors made of
one piece of lumber, really date. Dining tables were known here
with tops made of a single piece of plank. One such top was
three feet wide and four feet long. The tree from which it had
been cut was obviously a great mast pine.
The men who went from here to cut the tall pines, were said
to have gone "a-masting." An old record of April, 1778, about
the laying out of a county road (Tristram Jordan, Thomas
Gillpatrick, Benjamin Nason, Jacob Bradbury and James Sullivan,
were the local surveyors of that road) traces its line by
mention of "the old mast camp" below Little Ossipee Pond, to
the "mast way" on the western bank of the Pond and "on the
northern side of Little Ossipee Mountain." Unfortunately that
record of 1778 gives no clue as to just how long that "old mast
camp" and "old mast way" had been there. But James Sullivan
and his fellow- surveyors from Biddeford were evidently on the
site of an old source of mast supply.
The men who cut the great trees were called "masters" and
"mast-men'.' Before the tree was cut, its line of fall had to be
determined, and all hollows filled in with yielding brush or
branches - which was known as "bedding the fall." Since these
trees were to be masts, bearing heavy sails, shaken by stormy
seas, whipped by howling winds - since upon their strength and
soundness depended the lives of the sailors on the ships with
those masts, it was important that when those trees were felled
they should be cushioned on the ground to avoid twisting strains
that might produce hidden and dangerous v/eaknesses. Even the
roads over which they were dragged had to be carefully surveyed
and planned to avoid sharp curves or sudden bumps, or hills on
which the heavy load might overrun and crush men and oxen. It
was careful, skilled, dangerous business, and the men who
directed the long line of oxen (from 16 to 32 animals to a tree)
and the teamsters and helpers as the great tree was hauled on
mast-sleds or block-wheels (wheels made of great round blocks
of creaking wood), such men were known as master-carters and it
was a proud title. It was not everyone who could take charge
of a tree on the ground where it had been felled, and then
watch over every foot of its passage from the forest to the
mast road and down to the mast shed at the mouth of the river.
There skilled workmen, known as "mast-wrights" , hewed it with
hand axes and adzes into proper size and shape. A large mast-
shed is said to have been at the mouth of the Saco River in
Colonial days.
70.
I
>1
IV
Stories and Legends
In shaping the mast, the mast-wrights followed an odd rule -
for each inch In diameter the mast should be three feet tall.
Thus the largest diameter used (which was 36 inches) meant that
the finished mast was IO8 feet tall. That was a lot of timber
to be in one piece, and it took a pine from 125 to 150 feet tall
to make such a mast. Also there was no way of getting such long
sticks into the hold of an average ship, and thus the trade was
carried on in what were known as mast-ships. They were squat,
bluff-bowed vessels. In the stern they had a large door or port
that could be let down and the great long logs were pulled and
pushed into the ship. In its long uninterrupted floor, the hold
of such a mast-ship must have more nearly resembled the hangar
deck of a modern aircraft carrier than any other type of Colonial
ship construction. The mast-ships were about 400 tons, which
was large for the day. They carried a crew of 25 men, and from
4o to 50 masts made up a full cargo. So valuable were those
cargoes, so prized were the pine masts of Maine, that the ships
often travelled in convoys protected by warships. In 1770 a
mast 36 inches in diameter (and IO8 feet long) sold in England
for 110 English Pounds, or about $>550. Thus the total cargo
of a mast-ship could run to $25,000 or $30,000 in value, very
big money for those days.
Because of the sand bar at the mouth of the Saco River, it
is doubtful that the mast-ships came here to load. Sometimes the
masts were made into large rafts and floated to Portsmouth and
Boston. Others were sent to Portland, which at the time of the
Revolution was an important port for the mast trade. In fact,
one of the contributing causes of the bombing and burning of
Portland (then called Falmouth) in October, 1775» was the way
the people there had hidden (and refused to give up) a cargo of
pine masts that the English Captain Mowatt had been sent to
convoy. The people of Maine had made up their minds to pay no
more attention to the King's "broad arrow".
71.
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.XT
Stories and Legends
Chapter VI
Revolutionary Days in Biddeford
A part of Biddeford’ s story in the American Revolution has
been told in ”An Introduction to Biddeford 's History", pages
8 to 11. It should be remembered that in that war the actual
fighting lasted from April, 1775 (the battle of Lexington) to
October, 1781 (the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown) . But
peace was not formally declared until almost the middle of 1783,
and thus the Revolution ranks as the longest ma;)or war in our
national history - more than six years of fighting, with another
two years of armed watchfulness and uncertainty. In those eight
years Biddeford men went off to war, were killed or drifted away
or returned. How many went or died or settled elsewhere or
returned, has never been recorded r and cannot now be learned.
Biddeford was then part of Massachusetts and her men served in
the famous regiments known as "the Massachusetts Line", and their
service was merged with that of the men of Massachusetts. The
surviving records show that of the total of 231,771 men who
served in the Continental army (what might be called the "regular"
army) a total of 67,907- almost 30 per cent - were men from
Massachusetts and Maine. The next highest State (Connecticut)
furnished 31,939, or less than half the number from Massachusetts
and Maine. After one desperate fight, George Washington rode
along the front of his troops to thank the men whose courage had
brought victory. As he passed, he took off
his hat and exclaimed "God bless the
Massachusetts Line." It is part of our Maine
heritage that when he spoke those words he
was in front of the Massachusetts’ brigades
made up of men from York and Cumberland
counties. Men from Biddeford heard, and
deserved, Washington’s words.
During the siege of Boston that followed
the battle of B\mker Hill, James Sullivan
wrote from Biddeford to a friend in January,
1776, that "more than one half of the men in
the town" were already serving under George
Washington. Other Biddeford men marched
through the woods with Arnold to attack
Quebec. Captain Jeremial Hill's company
fought all through the hard campaign that
began with Ticonderoga and ended with the
great victory over Burgoyne at Saratoga. And
Biddeford men marched and trained with
rag-bound bloody feet (they had no shoes) in
the bitter cold and snows of Valley Forge.
72.
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With all that record of service it would seem, at first
glance, a little mysterious that so little has come down to us
about those men. Their records have largely been lost, their
personal experiences were never recorded. No newspaper reporters
then travelled with the army, nor went to sea with the swift
little privateers that sailed down the Saco and out to sea. The
Revolution had no Ernie Pyle. And the men who came back were
like the men of World War I and World War II - those who had seen
the most service, did the least talking about it. George Folsom,
writing his History in I83O, did make an effort to cover the
local story of the Revolution and there were many Revolutionary
veterans still living at the time (the last one did not die until
1852) . But Folsom was a young man of 28 without any experience
in war or military service. And it is evident that he could not
talk the language of the old veterans, and so failed to get the
personal stories that would have meant so much now.
As to the people who fought the war at home, it is also
unfortunate that no one left any written diary or other record -
at least’ no diary or written memoir of that time was ever
published or made publicly available in Biddeford. But in
Falmouth (now Portland) the Reverend Thomas Smith (see page 45)
and his assistant, the Reverend Samuel Deane, made daily notes
that were published in 1849. Falmouth was only 15 miles from
Biddeford. On that October day in 1775 when the warships of
Captain Mowatt began the bombardment that lasted from 9 in the
morning until 6 at night, and burned more than 100 houses and
buildings • all during that long day the people of Biddeford must
have listened to the distant cannonading, and watched the great
smoke clouds, and at night saw the glow in the sky of the
conflagration. Watched and listened*- and all the while wondered
if Mowatt would come next to the Saco River. It cannot be
doubted that the rumors, the true news, the false news, the fears
and rejoicings, the hungers and a'hxieties that swept Falmouth
were very much the same as those that swept Biddeford. The
diaries of Parsons Smith and Deane are therefore a fair guide to
Revolutionary Biddeford. Enough, at least, to give a good
picture of the times.
The famous Boston Tea Party took place in December, 1773* In
punishment the English King and Parliament ordered Boston closed
to all commerce. In May, 1774, the British General Gage arrived
with several thousand troops and by the middle of June the
closing of Boston was felt strongly in Biddeford whose trade had
been largely with and through Boston. On June l4 the church bell
of Falmouth, also hard hit, was tolled dismally all day in protest
at Boston’s punishment. The First Continental Congress met in
Philadelphia and established a system of Committees of Safety and
Inspection to organize the country’s defense. Biddeford, in July,
adopted a strong resolution agreeing to treat as ”an Enemy to his
Country” anyone who should oppose the defense measures adopted
by Congress and the town. Business was stagnated, even the law
courts were dull. Folsom gives a picture of the times when he
73.
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says that James Sullivan
"took his axe, week’s provisions,
and blanket, frock and trows ers
(trousers were then worn only
by sailors, woodsmen and farm
laborers at work - all other
men wore knee breeches) and
went.... to Limerick... and
commenced falling trees to
reduce his lands to a state of
cultivation for the support of
himself and family. On
Saturday evenings he returned
(the distance was nearly thirty
miles) as black and as cheerful
as the natives (Indians) when
they return from a successful
hunt.”
There was hope that the troubles
could be arranged so that there
would be no war. In February, 1775» Parson Smith wrote in his
diary;
”We have the King’s speech to the new Parliament...
People are much joyed by the debates of Parliament, which
they think begin to look in our favor.”
But on April 6th he wrote again:
”We have been flushed for some days with news... that the
merchants and manufacturers and others (of England) were
rising in our favor and that Parliament was likely to
repeal all the Acts; but have now news that sinks us
entirely - that Parliament and administration are
violently resolute with l4 frigates and 4 more new ,
regiments coming by force to oblige us to a compliaritie
with the laws.”
At about the same time (on March 31) his assistant. Parson Deane,
was recording;
”Some minute men from Plymouth appeared in town with
extraordinary sort of caps, who were found to be very
expert in the military exercise”.
Those Plymouth minute men, with their ” extraordinary sort of caps,
probably came to encourage and train the minute men of Falmouth,
and undoubtedly some of them either came to Biddeford or were
seen and marvelled at by Biddeford people. And just as
undoubtedly the Plymouth men in caps made quite an impression
among the ladies - and set Biddeford youths to wearing the same
74.
Rev. Thomas Smith
mml iaHS ixnt
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Stories and Legends
dashing headgear.
But almost at once came the battle of Lexington, on April
19th. The news reached Biddeford shortly after midnight of the
following day, and the messenger was in Falmouth before daybreak.
Parson Smith wrote gloomily, '*A civil war is now commenced", and
his associate. Parson Deane, added a few days later "People
moving their goods out of town in great numbers." The fear was
not of an invading army, but of sudden raids by a British fleet.
The letters of James Sullivan constantly stress the exposed
position of Biddeford and Falmouth as "seacoast towns", and his
biographer says that when Sullivan moved from Biddeford in 1778
it was to place his family in interior Massachusetts for greater
safety. The terrible example of the bombardment and burning
of Falmouth by Mowatt’s ships and marines, was never forgotten
along this coast during the Revolution.
News travelled very slowly in those days; it took far more
time then for the truth to catch up to a rumor. And old Parson
Smith's diary still preserves some of the rumors that made
the people here anxious. He writes, for example: "We hear that
General Carlton of Canada is coming upon us with an army, and
that 4o or 50 Indians are certainly discovered" - which later
proved false. When Burgoyne began his march down Lake Champlain
the parson recorded the news:
"We hear Ticonderoga is taken (by the British) .. .news
which throws the whole country into wonder and distress.
Lord help us*."
That was in July. Three months later came the American victory at
Saratoga and the surrender of Burgoyne’ s army - "Our people were
mad in their rejoicing", wrote Parson Smith. Thus it went, as
in all wars - good news, bad news, hopes up, hopes down. The
year after Saratoga there were strong rumors of the English
people being tired of the war and ready to talk peace. But there
was to be three more years of fighting, before Cornwallis
surrendered at Yorktown. Reading a general history of the
Revolution, it would be easy to get the impression that those
were three fairly easy years for Maine. It is true that most
of the land fighting happened in the South. But the seacoast
towns of Maine were kept continually on edge with threat of
British naval landings. There was drought and threat of famine:
"The Indian corn curls and is like to come to nothing, and there
is no prospect of any potatoes nor turnips. .. .Lord have mercy
upon us!" There was inflation: "Green peas sold at Boston at
$20 a peck. Board 60 dollars a week.” That was in June, 1779 •
Corn was $35 a bushel, Indian meal $30. By I78I Parson Deane
was writing: "Paid for two yards 01* cloth, $400." In that
same year, within a month and a half before the surrender of
CkSTnwallis, the news came to Biddeford and Falmouth that Benedict
Arnold, traitor to his country, was raiding the Connecticut coast
and had burned Groton and New London. "We fear he is coming on
75-
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Stories and Legends
us,” wrote Parson Smith. It was a very real fear, and it was
justified. It was a fear, too. that had been kept alive for two
years by the presence of British ships and British troops in
Penobscot Bay. That enemy force had seized a point known as
Bagaduce in June, 1779; they were strategically located to
threaten the whole Northern New England coast. Parson Smith
reflected the fears of all Maine towns on the seacoast when he
confided to his diary, ”We are in a sad toss; people are moving
out. Never did I feel such anxiety.” A badly organized, and
badly led, expedition was organized by the Massachusetts
authorities to drive out the British. Many local men took part.
That unlucky Bagaduce expeditionary force met shameful and
crushing defeat in August, 1779; incidentally it ruined the
military reputation of Paul Revere who was a lieutenant-colonel
in the expedition, but who apparently proved a better horseback
rider than a military leader. When the news reached here, the
good Parson Smith wrote again in his diary ”Our people are in a
sad toss, expecting an attack by the enemy.” Thereafter during
the war whenever strange vessels were reported or seen off the
coast, the rumor ran from town to town that the Bagaduce British
were coming for a retaliatory raid. As late as March, 1781,
Parson Smith was writing ”We are in a woeful toss by news... of a
scheme of an attack from Bagaduce.” Biddeford was undoubtedly
just as worried.
The American Revolution was a real war to the people of
Biddeford, both to those who were in service and to those who
kept the home fires burning. Some of the parallels to the wars
of our own time have already been shown - the fear of raids, the
rise of prices and inflation. But there is one interesting
parallel that has never previously been emphasized. It will be
remembered that the First World War was marked by a premature
celebration of peace, known as the False Armistice. A similar
premature announcement marked both the German and Japanese
surrenders in World War II. When people are hungry for peace,
it does not take much to make them believe a peace rumor. And
the people of Revolutionary Biddeford and Falmouth were no
different from us in that respect. The American Revolution had
its false armistice celebration, in fact it had several as old
Parson Smith’s diary records. On October 4, 1781, he viTote that
handbills (the newspaper extras of the day) had been received
from Boston ”with the news of the surrender of Cornwallis and his
army.... Our people are rejoicing.” But on October 15th he
wrote sadly, ”The great news of Cornwallis is premature.” It was-
Cornwallis did not surrender until October 19th, and in those
days without radio, telegraph, telephone or airplane, it was
October 27th (more than a week'.) before the news came by a
galloping postrider along the old King's Highway to Biddeford and
Falmouth. The same thing happened with the Treaty of Versailles
that finally ended that war, just as another Treaty of Versailles
ended World War I more than 135 years later. And the diary of
the other Falmouth parson, Reverend Samuel Deane, gives a vivid
picture of how long they had to wait for news in 1783* The
76.
I
I
- - ■ (
Stories and Legends
dispatch rider left Philadelphia for Boston on March 23rd. He
reached Boston on Saturday morning, March 29th. The news came
to Biddeford and Falmouth early on Monday, March 31st. That
rider seems to have carried authentic word of the signing of the
preliminary treaty of peace at Paris on November 30, the year
before*. Our forefathers certainly knew how to wait for news.
They had to learn the hard way. And still they did not have
full assurance of peace. A month after that dispatch rider came,
old Parson Smith was writing, **0ur people had 'a grand rejoicing
day... Had a Public Dinner, and 13 cannon fired several times."
But three days later he wrote again:
"People are all damped in their extravagant rejoicings,
by accounts now brought that, there is no Proclamation
come Tor Peace but only for a cessation of hostilities,
and that there is a violent opposition in Parliament
against it."
That was in May of 1783* It was September of that year before
the final treaty was signed. It was almost November before the
news reached Biddeford and Falmouth. But at last peace had
really come.
The town watches for a spy
In the Massachusetts archives there is still preserved an
old document that gives an amusing glimpse of Biddeford excitement
as the war for freedom began. It is dated June 28, 1775? just
eleven days after the battle of Bunker Hill. It is a letter
to the Provincial Congress then in session at Watertown in
Massachusetts, and it is from the Biddeford Committee of
Inspection - just about the same committee that in World War II
was called tl^e Committee for Civilian Defense. This is the
letter;
"To the Honorable, the Provincial Congress
May it please your Honors: As we have tho*t
proper to forward to your Honors under Convoy of the
Bearers, Messrs Noah Hooper and Edgecomb Nason, a
Person who calls himself Thos. Neat, we apprehend it
to be our Duty as a Committee of Inspection, to
transmit you an exact detail of our proceedings
relative to him, that he may be dispos'd of as your
Honors may judge expedient - therefore beg leave to
represent that on Saturday last, the Person in
question arriv'd in this Town and being a Stranger
some of the inhabitants were pre ossess'd with a
Suspicion of his being a Spy. The Committee in
consequence were immediately applied to - We
attended - when he submitted to an Examination, and
gave the following Account of himself - to wit, that
77.
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Stories and Legends
he was a native of Britain - had liv’d several Years
in America - had frequently travelled, and was well
acquainted in most of the Southern Colonies, and had
previous to the present unhappy Crisis of the
unnatural Contest between Great Britain and her Colonie.
acquired the Birth (berth) of a Steward on board his
Majesty’s Ship Senegal, Capt Doddingston, Commander.
That he left England in said Ship about 10 weeks since
- fully persuaded from the representations he had there
receiv’d that the Disturbance in America was kindled
by the Breath of a faction - by no means formidable,
that it might easily be quelled, and was universally
disapproved by the Cool and dispassionate of all
Denominations in the Colonies - that the first americar
Port they touch’d at was Boston - where they soon had
Orders to repair to Falmouth, in Casco Bay, at which
place he had been two Weeks - that on his arrival in
America, he found not a faction but the whole Contineni
joined in Opposition to
parliamentary Measures - that
therefore he Could not in
Conscience continue in a Service
in which he must be Obliged to
draw the Sword against America -
for that Reason he had left the
Ship and propos’d going to
Philadelphia where he had severa
friends and Acquaintances - and
that he should have applied for
Pass prior to his leaving
Falmouth, but that he imagined
such application would be attend
ed with Danger, as the Ship lay
the riarbor -
”In Order if possible to be
more fully ascertained of the
truth of the above Declaration -
we next day dispatch’d a Person to Falmouth to wait on
the Committee there - who informed him that the
Steward had departed the Ship - and that the Captain,
supposing he had been detained by the People, sent a
Message to Col. Preble to demand a Restoration of him -
The Col. return’d for Answer that he knew nothing of
him, but that he was seen a little while before, going
out of Town - Col. Preble likewise inform’d the
Messenger sent by us that he had had some conversation
with this person and heard him say he intended to leave
the Ship for the reason abovemention’ d. He hired a
Horse a little without the Town of Falmouth and came
publicly to this place.
’’The above may it please your Honors is a true
Account of what we have been a*ble to Collect relative
78.
.n
Stories and Legends
to the person in Custody - And as the People here are
uneasy, and still apprehensive that he may be inimical
to the Interests of America - we have Judged it most
'elligible that he should be sent to the Congress that
your Honors may give further Orders concerning him, as
your Wisdom may direct.
Rishw’th Jordan (Committee of Inspection
Benja. Hooper (for the Town of .
Thos. Gillpatrick ( Biddeford
Biddeford, 28th June, 1775 •
That is all that has come down to us, except that Congress
appointed a committee of three who examined Thomas Neat and
decided that he was not a spy. But before we smile too much at
the tempest-in-a-teapot nature of that happening, it is well to
remember how frequently and frantically people phoned the FBI
at the beginning of World War II, accusing neighbors (as well as
strangers; of being German or Japanese spies. All our wars have
begun with a case of spy- Jitters . The American Revolution was
no exception.
The Bloody Freshet
One more story has come down to us of the beginning of the
Revolution, and it shows the same unease. The incident occurred
' in October, 1775? and like the case of Thomas Neat it was while
the war still centered around Boston - and months before the
Declaration of Independence. It is unquestionably a true story
because it was told by James Sullivan who lived here at the time.
Twenty years later (in 1795) Sullivan published the first history
ever written of Maine. Massachusetts had then been divided into
three districts, the northern one being known as the District of
Maine. Thus the title of Sullivan’s book - "The History of the
District of Maine." This is the way Sullivan wrote the story;
"In the year 1775? the river Saco was found to swell
suddenly, and in a manner very singular to the
inhabitants on its banks; as there had not been rain
sufficient to increase the waters so much they were at
a loss to account for the appearance. But it was finally
discovered to be occasioned by a new river having broken
out on the side of the White Mountains, and issuing into
the Saco. That river continues yet to aid the Saco, with
considerable waters, though the exact quantity gained
from it is not ascertained by any traveller, yet it is
generally considered as furnishing Ellis' river, a branch
of the Saco, with half its waters.
"When this new river issued from the mountain in October
1775? a mixture of iron ore gave the waters a red colour
79.
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Stories and Legends
for several days, and the people who Inhabited the
upper banks of the Saco had a report that the river
was bloody, and considered it as an ill omen on the
public concerns.”
It is stories such as that which help us realize what a
really profound break, what an utter shattering of habit and
tradition, the American Revolution was. For a century and a half
the people here had looked on themselves as British subjects -
”liege’ subjects of his Lord, the King”, as the old court records
run. England was the "mother country” even to men such as old
Parson Smith of Falmouth, who was at least the third generation
of his family in this country. Yet Parson Smith, it will be
recalled (see page 75)) wrote in his diary ”A civil war is now
commenced”, on hearing the news of the battle of Lexington. And
the good Parson was not a Tory, nor an English sympathizer, but
a sound patriot - as his diary shows.
Small wonder therefore that people should look at the
swollen Saco in 1775 and think those strange waters, running as
red as blood, should be a sign that disaster lay ahead for
America. Superstitious fears and omens have been a part of
every war in American history - the people of Revolutionary
Biddeford are not as remote from us in spirit and thought, as
they are in time.
1 £ N T Y <1 S }-u L L i 5N O' S'
Paper money of the Revolution
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Stories and Legends
Chapter VII
The l8th Century closes
When the Indians in 1675 burned all the houses between the
Pool and the Falls of the Saco, they stopped the town’s growth
for more than thirty years. As the l8th Century began (with
the year 1700) , the town life was centered around Winter Harbour
village, as the Pool was then called. But before the middle of
the century the upper King’s highway, the Smith tavern, the •
upper ferry, and the bridge - all these marked a growing population
around the Falls. After the American Revolution, as the loth
Century drew near its end, this new center began to be called
’’the Falls village.”
The first recognition of the change came in 1785» Up to
that time all town meetings had been held in the one town church
- which was known, appropriately enough, as ”the meeting house."
That church was located on ’’the road to Wint 3r Harbour", about
half way to the Falls. An annual town meeting took place in
March and all town officers were then elected. But in I78O
Massachusetts adopted its first State constitution, and did so
by popular vote. Out of the 1006 inhabitants of Blddeford, only
10 travelled to the old church on the Pool Road to vote. But
Jeremiah Hill, the town clerk, boldly wrote on the official
return of that vote "Ten men may save the City." Thereafter
a new election v/as held in April of each year, to vote for a
Governor, a Lieutenant Governor, and State legislators. What
the town vote was for the first two years, is not recorded in
the town book. But when the entries do begin (in 1782) only l4
votes were cast, and the same number the following year. Some
protest may have been made, that the old church was no longer
a convenient meeting place. For the 1785 record runs:
"(Met) at the Meeting house in said town on Monday
the fourth day of April, 1785, at three of the
Clock in the afternoon, and by adjournment to the
dwelling house of Mr. Daniel Hooper, Innholder in
said Town, at five of the Clock in the afternoon
on said day: the number of written votes returned
- . are twenty- thr ee
The inn of Daniel Hooper stood on what is now the north side of
Main Street, about opposite the foot of Foss Street. It may '
seem strange today that a tavern and a church should be looked
upon as equal meeting places. But the fact was not strange in
1785. Not long before this, a noted minister of Massachusetts
had lost his voice and had to give up preaching. For his new
81.
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Stories and Legends
vocation he became a distiller of New England rum - and suffered
no loss of dignity or public regard because of the change.
Preaching was an honest profession, and so was distilling, and
inn~keeping. That Biddeford election meeting of 1785 gave
unconscious testimony to the fact that the church and the Hooper
inn were the two centers of town life. That was true not only
in Biddeford but throughout New England,
together .
The Hooper Inn
Behind a celebrated inn there was
always a great personality. While the
Hooper inn was in the name of Daniel
Hooper, the real figure was Daniel’s
father - Benjamin Hooper. There is
no doubt but that Benjamin was the most
widely known inn personage in Biddeford
history. His portrait has not come down
to us but in an old letter, written 50
years after his death by a man who knew
him, ’’Esquire Hooper” is called ’’the
St. Nicholas of Biddeford.” That phrase
can only mean that he was ruddy, jovial,
and round - the traditional figure of
the jolly boniface.
Benjamin Hooper came to Biddeford
from Berwick about 17^. He was then a
young man of twenty. In 17^ he
married Lydia Smith, daughter of Capt.
Daniel Smith who just six years before
had opened the first inn on the upper
King’s highway (see page 50). In
court records of 1757» Benjamin is
described as a ’’cordwainer” . which
meant that he was a worker in
’’cordovan” or fine leather. Before
that, in 17^9, he had been licensed
as a ’’retailer” of drinks and thus
apparently kept a general store in
connection with his leather business.
In that same year of 1757 he was elected a selectman of Biddeford
and in a court action of 1762 he is described as ’’Benjamin Hooper,
Gent., and one of the Deputy Sheriffs in said County.” They
were careful in such descriptions in those days. So that the
word ’’Gdntleman” meant a man of distinction and property. As
proof, 'Benjamin Hooper was chosen, along with Jamies Sullivan
and Rishworth Jordan, as one of the five members of Biddeford' s
first Committee of Safety and Inspection in the American
Revolution. This was in December, 177^*
The year before (in 1773) he had built the large house, later
Church and tavern went
82
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Stories and Legends
called '‘the mansion house”, and attached to it at one side a
small one-story office for Dr. Aaron Porter who settled in
Biddeford that same year. When George Thacher, the young
lawyer, settled in Biddeford in 1782 Con the advice of James
Sullivan) he also opened his office in the Hooper building. Up to
then Squire Hooper seems to have kept just a general store,
probably because Elisha Allen’s tavern was still active and quite
near. But Elisha seems to have retired in 1782 and in that same
year Benjamin Hooper was first licensed as an ’’innholder”,
transferring the license the next year to his son Daniel who was
then about 29 years old. Ten years later (1792) Prentiss Mellen
settled in Biddeford on the advice of George Thacher, and he
also took an office in the Hooper inn. Afterwards, Prentiss
Mellen became the first Chief Justice of Maine and he then
described his early Biddeford office thus:
”I opened my office in one of old Squire Hooper’s
front chambers, in which were then arranged three
beds and a half a table and one chair. My clients
had the privilege of sitting on some of the beds.
In this room I slept, as did also sundry travelers
frequently, the house being a tavern.”
That the three beds in one room was not unusual is shown by the
testimony of an English officer who spoke of the ’’general
(American) custom of having two or three beds in a room”, while
another traveller said ' that after you were asleep the landlord
entered, candle in hand, and escorted a stranger to your side,
and he calmly shared the bed till morning.’ ’’Any one who
objected to a stranger as bedfellow, was regarded as obnoxious
and unreasonably fastidious.” Remembering that Squire Hooper
was a son-in-law of Madam Ladd who as the wife, first of Captain
Daniel Smith, and then of Nathaniel Ladd, had been mistress of
the Smith-Ladd inn for more than thirty years - remembering
that chain of descent we can be quite sure that in Prentiss
Mellen’ s report we have a picture not only of the Hooper inn
but also of those over which Madam Ladd and her famous husbands
presided .
In 1789 George Thacher went to New York to attend the first
United States Congress, and in that year secured for his friend,
Squire Hooper, the appointment as Biddeford* s first postmaster.
And the postoffice remained at the Hooper inn until 1802 when
both the Squire and his son were dead. As a general store, as
an inn, as the only postoffice on both sides of the Saco River,
the Hooper inn was the chief meeting place of the town. There
the judges stayed when court was in session, there the mail-
wagon stopped - at first once a week, then twice a week, and
then (for what was considered remarkable service) three times a
week. Townspeople dropped in for a bowl of toddy or flip, or
to talk to travellers who had broken their journey for a meal
or a night. When Biddeford built a court house, the Hoopers
warmed and lighted it, and the old court records still show the
83.
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Stories and Legends
typical entry: **Paid Daniel Hooper, Esq., the sum of Hine Dollars
for furnishing the Court with firewood and candles at this term.'*
The old inn ledgers have been lost, but the account book for
the Hooper store has been preserved. The old leatherbound folio
gives an interesting picture of the merchandising of the day. It
begins in 1785 and covers about fifteen years. The customers
include the best-known names in Biddeford; they also include
the nam.es of Prince and Black Peter, who were former slaves. They
show that the merchant then served as banker and moneylender, as
well as storekeeper. And the list of different articles and the
different kinds of merchandise sold, is literally amazing. As an
example is the account of Dr. Aaron Porter, Biddeford' s famous
physician of the Revolution. Dr. Porter bought ribbon, powder
(whether for the face or a gun, is not clear), candles, raisins,
paper, tea, lumber, ”500 Nails'*, and two quarts of New England
rum.
The Reverend Nathaniel Webster, minister of the old town
church on the Pool Road, bo\xght flour, tobacco, corn, butter,
indigo, sugar, molasses, writing paper, chocolate, ”1 Chip Hatt”,
shoes - and ”West India Rum” by the gallon. Colonel Rishworth
Jordan, noted town dignitary, is represented with ”3 pints
W.I. Rum”, which in those days represented Just about three good
drinks. Deacon Simon Wingate, a leading figure along the Pool
road, and the accuser in Biddeford' s curious heresy trial to be
told later - even the Deacon's account shows ”3 yds Tobacco,
4 gals. Molasses, 2 qts N.E. Rum.”
There is one account in the old book (now over 160 years
in age) that is of special interest, because it was an entry in
that account that furnished the first definite proof that
Biddeford had once been a court town of importance. The trail
started by that account led to the story of the Biddeford courts
that will be told on a later page. The single sentence "To
your expences Court-week”, was the clue in the following lines
that led to the uncovering of Biddeford 's court house and court
history. This is the account of a visiting Boston attorney
staying with the Hoopers. The, reckoning Is ih shillings and pence
”1784 .Sept. To 1 Bowl of Punch 2/5 To 3 Glasses grog 1/
to 1 Dinner 1/
To 2 Suppers 2/ To Lodgings 9 Nights 4/6
To 9 Breakfasts 9/
To 4 Dinners 5/ To Grog 4/ to 6 Bowls
Punch 12/
To keeping .a Horse 9 Nights 12/ to 1 Bottle
Wine 3/
To Oats 1/ To your expences Court-week 61/6
• • • •
To 1 Dinner for a Pigwacket man 1/ To
1 pint Wine 1/6
To Sundries del'd your brother Peter 4o/6”
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Stories and Legends
That was the way the gentlemen of the professions lived (and
drank) while travelling on business. Some of the costs are
amusing. Lodging was 6 pence a night for a man - but it cost
”a shilling fourpence”, or three times as much, for a horse.
Dinner cost a shilling, which was exactly as much as the cost of
treating three friends to a glass of grog. And a bowl of punch,
that great drink of genteel sociability, cost the price of three
dinners. But the recipe of Squire Hooper’s punch has sadly been
lost. The recipe is known to have varied a little with each
tavern. And a good punch recipe was, next to a genial host,
about the best advertisement and drawing card of an old-time inn.
It is pretty clear that Squire Hooper loved, and served, a good
punch.
The Squire’s son, Daniel, seems also to have been genial,
though perhaps without the talent for public life his father
displayed. But here and there are little touches in the old
account book that bring back an echo of those old hearty days.
At the foot of one account, written in a large bold hand, there
is this note, dated February 18 th 1792:
’’This day settled all accounts from the Beginning
of the World to the above date between us, except
the account of the Schooner Polley, and there
appears due to Benjamin Gillpatrick the sum of Two
Pounds Seven Shillings
As witness our Hands
Benja. Gillpatrick
Daniel Hooper”
Biddeford’s first Official Map
In June of 179*+ the General Court of Massachusetts ordered
each tovm in the State to prepare and submit an ’’accurate” map
of its boundaries and principal roads. Things moved slowly then.
It was November before the town held a special meeting in the
Pool road church to appoint a committee for the survey. And it
was May of 1795 before the map was finished - the first official
map of Blddeford. The lower portion of that map (which is still
filed in the Massachusetts archives) was reproduced on page 28
of the first part of these ’’Stories and Legends”. The upper
part, covering ”the Falls village”, is reproduced on the next
page. Unfortunately that map does not show many of the local
roads, known to have then been in existence. It was concerned
with what we would now call the through roads, and with the
landmarks that would interest the General Court. Thus only the
Upper and Lower roads to Arundel (now the Guinea Road, and the
Kennebunk Road - U. S. 1) are shown because they were the roads
that would be used by through traffic. And the landmarks were
the one tovm church, the courthouse, and the mills.
Sometimes the complaint is heard that the coming of the
cotton mills in the lo40s turned Biddeford into an industrial
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Stories and Legends
town. But the plain truth is that the
Industrialization of Biddeford began more
than a century before the cotton mills
came. It can be dated back to 1691 when
Captain Turfey built a sawmill on the
riverbank just above the Falls. In 1720
Samuel Cole built a mill a little farther 'Vm
up, and built his home nearby. It was U»,w. . ^ \
the son of Samuel, William Cole, who
died at the early age of thirtylsix.
It was William' s widow who married the j ^ ^
cheery army surgeon with the Scottish 1
speech, Dr. Donald Cummings (see pages \ /
53-^) I and the Cole house became known
as "Cummings'". That section of Biddeford
to the north of Smith street, and running
from the Falls to opposite Gooch Island,
was known as "the mill brow" before 173P.
It not oaly held the mills, it also
held some of the best homes and
families of Biddeford. The site is
wholly covered now by the buildings
of the Saco-Lowell Shops.
The map of 1795 shows four active mills
along the "mill brow", and two more just
built, on Spring's Island. By 1800, Folsom
says in his History, there were "seventeen
saws in operation about the Falls" - of
which twelve were on the Biddeford river-
bank. Gooch Island and Spring's Island.
By 1815 a minister of Saco was writing
enthusiastically, "there is water enough
for 2000 mills and factories. This town p ,
will one day be celebrated for its .
manufactories." It was the Iximber
trade that "made" Biddeford, and that began
its industrialization. And the Saco River
is now said to be the oldest river in the
United States, from the standpoint of
continuous lumbering operation.
There is one other point of interest
in the map of 1795* That is the sketch of
the old Pool Road church. The present
structure is rather barnlike, and only one
story. And repeated attempts have been made
to point it out as a good specimen of Colonial
architecture. This map of 1795 shows the church
as it was originally built in 1759* It was
two stories, it had a steeple, it was truly
Colonial. But it was completely remodelled,
and cut down to one story, in l840. So far as its
exterior goes, it is no longer Colonial.
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Stories and Legends
The Wild Pigeons
It is little known today that one of the distinctive sights
of Colonial life was beginning to fade as the l8th Century
closed. That was the hunting of the wild pigeons. Those
pigeons had been a marvel to the early settlers. John Josselyn,
the English lawyer, who lived at Black Point (Scarboro) in I63I
and again from I663 to 1671, thus described them:
“The pidgeons of which there are millions and
millions. I have seen a flight of Pidgeons in
the Spring, and at Michaelmas when they return
back to the Southward, for four or five miles, that
to my thinking had neither beginning nor ending,
length nor breadth, and so thick that I could see
no sun. They joyned nest to nest, and Tree to Tree
by their Nests many miles together in Pine Trees.
But of late they are much diminished, the English
taking them with nets.’*
But almost a hundred years later, good Parson Smith of Falmouth
was writing in his diary on September 2, 1752:
“I rode with Major Freeman and Peter to (Windham)
a pigeoning; we got near ten dozen.”
More than 100 pigeons, divided between three hunters - it meant
a lot of pigeon piei But it wasn't sport, it was sheer killing.
In his autobiography, the famous Neal Dow of Portland also
wrote of “pigeoning” as he had known it in his early boyhood
Wild pigeons and other small game
abounded... Two of our neighbors made
a business of hunting wild pigeons
in the season, and I was often
permitted to accompany them. Their
general method of capturing the birds
was with a net, so arranged that it
would drop over a flock that had been
induced to alight to feed upon
buckwheat or other grain spread out
to attract them.
It was interesting to watch the tame
pigeons which were often used to decoy
their wild relatives. They seemed to
understand the game admirably, and
almost invariably dodged out from under
the net at the right instant to free
themselves without unseasonably alarming
the wild birds. After the net had
fallen, the poor pigeons would squat on
(he was born in l804)t
The passenger pigeon
(The long, slender
tail was very
distinctive;
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Stories and Legends
the ground with their heads sticking up like so
many pegs through the net, and the hunters would
then pass around, breaking each neck with a pinch.
. I think it is within bounds to say that three
or four dozen was not' an unusual catch with one
drop of the net.”
*
Those wild pigeons were the beautiful passenger pigeons
that are now totally extinct. The last known specimen died in
captivity in 191^ - but no great flock had been seen in Maine
for almost a century before that. Even the brutal hunting that
Neal Dow saw in the l820s, had come to its end in this section
before another ten or twenty years had passed. The flights of
the passenger pigeons, in the Spring and again in late Fall,
were a spectacle that was ending for Biddeford at about the
same time that knee breeches were abandoned generally by men -
in favor of long trousers.
The Courts of Biddeford
Something else that passed with the l8th Century was the
annual coming of the courts to Biddeford. There were two of
these courts, and both were old even in the 18 th Century. Until
1760 the County of York took in the whole of Maine, and the
county courts sat in the towns of York and Falmouth. But in 1760
the two counties of Cumberland and Lincoln were created, and
the courts began to sit in Biddeford for *the Fall term. For
some reason there seems to have been no Fall term of court in
1761, but the next year (1762) saw the beginning of an annual
"feature attraction” for Biddeford that lasted through the
final years of the Colonial period, all through the Revolution,
and beyond the death of George Washington. The last sitting in
Biddeford was in October, I803. The next year the towns of
Kennebunk and Alfred replaced York and Biddeford as the court
towns for the county.
It is really remarkable that these court sessions in
Biddeford have never before been mentioned (or studied) in any
history of Biddeford. Even George Folsom, though a law student
as well as a practicing lawyer, does not mention them in his
History. Yet they were well worth mention and study. In the
old record books of their proceedings, still preserved at Alfred,
a whole panorama of l8th Century life is spread out - for those
who know how to read and view it. It isn't a full panorama;
^the great majority of the people, then as now, never had occasion
to be in court. But those who did, came from many different
walks of life. And came for so many different reasons that a
real cross-section emerges. Partly this is due to the broad
coverage of those old courts.
The first court, the Inferior Court of Common Pleas, had
jurisdiction over purely civil matters- such as actions for
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Stories and Legends
debt, damage, trespass and other civil matters. Its trials were
by jury, and it was presided over by four justices whose only
requirement v;as that they be ** substantial persons.” No judge
on that court, during the whole of the l8th Century, was a
lawyer - that is, a man educated or trained for the law. The
chief justice, for example, from 1736 to his death in 1759 was
Sir William Pepperell, merchant and land owner. But in spite
of the lack of lawyers, or perhaps because of it, the court's
reputation for justice was high.
The second, and more unusual court, was the Court of General
Sessions of the Peace. It also was an old court, going back in
York county to 1691* Its jurisdiction, in the words of a legal
historian of Maine:
••extended to all cases, civil and criminal, except
divorce and crimes v;hose punishment extended to life,
limb, or banishment; with power to summon juries,
appoint clerks and other officers. They also had
jurisdiction as a Court of Sessions, to lay out
highways, issue licenses to innholders etc.; also
probate power in the settlement of estates. They
combined the principal jurisdiction and duties of
the Superior, Inferior, and Probate Courts, as
subsequently established. ••
The records show that this court had power to lay taxes on the
towns for the support of courts, court officers and the county
jail. It punished towns for failure to keep highways in
repair, and for failure to provide schoolmasters Csee page 47).
It tried and punished individuals for offenses against morals,
for not attending church, for the illegal sale of liquor - even
for playing cards. The movies were not known in l8th Century
Biddeford, but the proceedings of this court certainly furnished
a substitute in entertainment value. One of the features in
that entertainment must have been the spectacle of the bench of
judges. For on the bench, in this court, every justice of the
peace in the whole county had the right to sit. Cases in the
old records are common where 24 or more justices are noted as
having been in attendance. The high point was reached in 1803,
in the last court held in Biddeford, when a total of 4l justices
are listed. They could not have all sat on the bench at the
same time - the bench just wasn’t big enough. But it is plain
that enough did sit, at one time or other during the term, to
make the historian wonder how the court reached its decisions.
The wonder grows when it is remembered that for 30 years (from
1762 to 1792) both courts met in private homes and inn parlors.
The list of meeting places in Biddeford is interesting.
From 1762 to 1767 the courts met in the house of ”John Gray,
yeoman”* John Gray owned a valuable strip of land near the
mill brow, and his house stood on the King's Highway close, to
where the office of the Pepperell Mills now stands. The records
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Stories and Legends
show that he was paid three pounds ” lawful money,” for the “Courts
sitting in his house.” From 1768 to 1770 the house of Dr. Donald
Cummings was used, which stood on the “mill brow** between the
river and what is now Smith Street. Dr. Cummings received forty
shillings each term - about two pounds. The next year (1771)
Nathaniel Ladd was paid **Three Pounds twelve Shillings”, and this
was probably the year of the famous mock trial (see page 55) • Then
Elisha Allen apparently made a low bid, because in 1772 the courts
began using his tavern at rates that dropped to thirty shillings,
in 177^, and then to “six shillings six pence” in 1775» and “ten
shillings” in 1776. Those last two low rates, however, also
measure the sharp drop in legal business (see page 73) caused by
the anxiety and the uncertainty of the Revolution’s beginning.
But Elisha Allen’s tavern, which stood at what is now White’s
Wharf, housed the courts until 1785 when a certain Marquess Myrrs
(of whom more will be later told) succeeded to the business. It
seems likely that Marquess had bought out Allen and was in a
hurry to get his money back. For his bill to the courts was
three pounds which the judges evidently thought was too high. For
the old records run:
“Ordered that thirty shillings (about one pound and a
half) be allowed Marquess Myrrs, for the use of his
room and benches this term, of his account for Three
Pounds being the full worth as thought by ye Court.”
Marquess Myrrs housed the courts for three years and then in 1788
Seth Spring took over and was allowed forty shillings “for the
use of his room and candles.” The next year Seth seems to have
run foul of the courts on the. cost of his services, for the 1789
record runs:
“Capt. Seth Spring having presented his account against
the county for the use of a room in his house for the
Court to sit in from the 13th to 21st inst., charged
at Six Pounds. Ordered by the Court that he receive
out of the Treasury the sum of Three Pounds in full
thereof.”
It seems probable that Seth Spring was then in charge of the old
Allen tavern, because his later famous inn on Spring’s Island
was not built until after 1795» This is confirmed by the fact
that an old almanac of 1795 gives Hooper and Spring as the two
innkeepers of Biddeford, and specifies Spring as being at “Saco
Bridge.” Ahd 'Folsom in his History distinctly says that the
bridge from Biddeford to Spring’s Island was not built until
“soon after” 1795* And Folsom further says that the first house
on Spring’ s Island was not built until 1795* It seems very
clear that the courts of Biddeford never met on Spring’s Island.
Because in 1792, after thirty years of “meeting ’round”, the
courts finally achieved a meeting place of their own. In those
thirty years the courts of Biddeford had changed from being
dispensers of “the King’ s Justice^! in which everything was done
90.
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in the name of the King of England - into courts in which
everything was done in the name of the people. The story of
that change is interesting, and has never been told before.
How the King's courts met freedom
Studying the old court records of York county, we get a
glimpse of what a really profound change the American Revolution
must have seemed to the people at the time. It hit the courts
especially hard, for the law is a thing of usage and custom and
tradition - and the Revolution brought a condition that, to the
legal mind, was utterly without precedent. That explains the
stagnation of legal business at the beginning of the Revolution.
In whose name would the courts sit, by whose authority could
they issue writs and orders and administer justice? After the
battle of Lexington in April, 1775 j and of Bunker Hill in June
of the same year, the situation was very puzzling. The country
was in open revolt against the King; a patriot like James
Sullivan was busily organizing Biddeford and other Maine towns
for armed defense against the King's ships and the King's troops
- and yet the forms of law were the King's forms and James
Sullivan and other lawyers were serving as ''King's attorney" in
the courts. On page 6? is shown the charge against poor Pompey,
the negro, accused of offending "against the Peace of the said
Lord the King, his Crown and Dignity." That was in the summer
of 1775j and in October of that year the courts met in Biddeford
' at almost the same time that the warships of Mowatt were
bombarding nearby Falmouth. That October term of court, still
held in the King's name, is of special interest to Biddeford
because at that time Rishworth Jordan, whose home was on the
Pool Road where Stella Maris School' now stands, took his place
as a judge. His service, which lasted for 22 years, thus began
at the last Biddeford court held in the name of the King of
England .
It was Spring of 1776 before
the lawyers could make up their
minds how to meet the situation.
And their solution was oddly .
lawyer-like. They took the
old forms of the King, and
everywhere the King* s name
appeared they substituted a
new phrase - "The Government
and People’ of the Massachusetts
Bay in New England." In the
old records of the court, dated
June 29, 1776, there appears
the new commission, bearing the
quaint seal shown here. It
is the seal that replaced -
even before the Declaration of
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Stories and Legends
Independence - the Klng*s seal in Massachusetts and Maine. The
names of 20 York County men appear in that commission. Two of
them were from Biddeford • Rishworth Jordan and James Sullivan.
It took real courage then to have one’s name stamped so plainly
as part of what still seemed to many people an Illegal and
criminally rebellious movement.
The wording of the old commission to the judges is in part
as follows:
•’Know ye that we have assigned you and every of you
jointly and severally our Justices to keep our Peace
in our County of York, within our said Province of the
Massachusetts Bay in New England, and to keep and
cause to be kept, the Laws and Ordinances made for the
good of the Peace and for the conservation of the
same and for the quiet rule and government of our
People in our said County, in all and every of the
Articles thereof, according to the force, form and
effect of the same, and to chastise and punish all
Persons offending against the form of those Laws and
Ordinances, or any of them, in the County aforesaid. ••
The ’^we” and "our** in that commission once referred to the King
of England. Now it meant a people determined to be free. There
is a great deal of meaning behind those quaint old lines.
The Courts after the Revolution
During a war the people are always looking forward to the
war's end, when "things can settle down again." Also, at the
same time, they are gloomily predicting that "things can never
be the same again." It is true that a long war does make changes
It is also true that the changes are not uniform, and oddly
inconsistent. In fact, it is only looking backward, after years
have passed, that we can really see what the changes actually were
The American Revolution was a long war, the longest war in our
history. There were six years of fighting, eight years of strain
and uncertainty. And yet, looking over the records of the courts
of Biddeford for the closing years of the l8th Century, it is
genuinely amazing how little change there seems from Colonial
days. The courts were now in the name of the people, instead of
the King; the judges spoke for America, and not for England. Bui
the punishments decreed in the name of the people were the same
that had been decreed in the name of the King. The forms had
changed, but the ideas and spirit behind the forms were much the
same. Poor old Pompey, sentenced in 1775? in the name of the
King, to be whipped and sold into servitude by Lady Mary
Pepperell, was the last man to suffer that punishment before
Colonial days ended with the Declaration of Independence. But
in 1782, with George Thacher of Biddeford as "Attorney for the
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Commonwealth”, and with Rlshworth Jordan of the Pool Road sitting
as a Judge, a white man was sentenced In the Court of General
Sessions of the Peace to be given ‘‘Nineteen Stripes on the naked
Back at the Public Whipping Post” and to be sold into servitude
for “the space of six years.” He had stolen goods in Saco (then
called Pepperellboro) whose “threefold damage” amounted to 384
Pounds 9 Shillings. Five years later (in 178?) another white man
was sentenced to ^Fifteen Strijies” ahd to be sold for
for stealing from a gentleman of Berwick goods to the value of
300 Pounds. The threefold damage amounted to 900 Pounds, which
shows that the courts then placed a value of 60 Poiinds (less
than $300) a year on a man's labor. As late as 1792, sixteen
years after the Declaration of Independence, a white man was
sentenced in this same court to be sold for three and a half
years and to be “severely whipped on the naked back” for a total
of 30 stripes. That harsh sentence was Imposed for five
complaints of theft that amounted even with threefold damages
to only 27 Pounds 12 Shillings - about $125** He was whipped
10 stripes for the first complaint and 5 stripes for each of the
other four - a total of thirty. It was a harsher sentence than
any imposed before the Revolution in the name of the King.
The Colonial prosecutions for not attending church (see
page 4o) seem to disappear after the Revolution. But new charges
in the same spirit occur - for the offense of playing cards. A
case of 1787 is of unusual interest because it was not only
tried in Biddeford in October of that year, but it also Involved
Marquess Myers at whose tavern the court was then sitting. The
unlucky Marquess, in other words, was both host and prisoner at
the bar*. It is unfortunate that more is not known of this same
Marquess. His name was evidently unusual, so much so that old
Daniel Sewall, the clerk of court, had a sad struggle spelling
it. The first year it occurs in the records, the name is spelled
Myrrs. The next year it is Myrs, and only in the third year did
old Daniel hit on what must have been the right spelling of Myers.
It is thought (see page 90) that Marquess Myers was then in
charge of the old inn of Elisha Allen. The record of the Myers*
trial of 1787 is an amusing document. The presiding Justice was
Rishworth Jordan, and Jeremiah Hill and Benjamin Hooper were
also on the bench. The record runs:
“Marquess Myers of Biddeford in said County, Innholder,
appearing to answer an indictment of the Grand Jury
found against him at this term, as follows: vizt.,
. That Marquess Myers of Biddeford aforesaid. Innholder,
being duly licensed according to law by the Justices
of the Peace of the said County of York, in General
Sessions assembled, to keep a public house of
entertainment and to be an Innholder and Taverner
within the said town of Biddeford: on the last day
of June last past, and on divers other days and times
between that day and the last day of September last
past, at Biddeford aforesaid, with force and arms, had
93.
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Stories and Legends
and kept in his said house, certain Cards, commonly
called Gaming Cards, for the use of Gaming; and with
force as aforesaid, that is to say with said Gaming
Cards, did play and game with certain other persons
to the Jurors unknown, there in his said house and in
manner aforesaid did suffer and permit certain other
other persons to the said Jurors unknown, resorting to
his said house for the purpose of gaming, to use and
exercise the game of Cards, that is to say. to exercise
and use said Cards in gaming within his said house in
evil example to all others in like manner to offend
against the peace and dignity of this Commonwealth and
contrary to the laws of the same in such case made
and provided.
”Which Indictment being read to the said Marquess
Myers, he pleads to the same * Guilty of playing Cards.*
It is therefore considered and ordered by the Court
that the said Marquess Myers pay a fine of Twenty
Shillings to the Commonwealth for the use of this
County, and costs of prosecution taxed at Twenty
Shillings and Two Pence, and stand committed till
Sentence be performed."
That indictment seems to have been drawn by Silas Lee, a young
man who had been studying law with George Thacher, and who was
then living with the Thachers in the house still standing at
208 South Street. Silas had just been admitted to the bar, and
was Attorney for the Commonwealth at this term of court. And
after all that elaborate legal wordage. Marquess Myers must have
thought himself lucky (as indeed he was*.) to get off with a
total cost of forty shillings - about .1^10. Incidentally, at
that same term the Court ordered Marquess to be paid 4 Pounds
5 Shillings "for the Court sitting at his house at last October
term and this term.'* Which sum was a little more than double
the fine and costs imposed on him for playing cards. Apparently
there were no hard feelings.
Twelve years later (in 1799* just a month before the death
of George Washington) another card case came up in the court
at Biddeford. It involved three well-known men of Biddeford,
Christopher Gillpatrick, Daniel Deshon and John Townsend, who
were indicted by the Grand Jury "for playing at cards in the
house of James Coffin, innholder, in said Biddeford." Rishworth
Jordan .again presided, and Daniel Hooper and Prentiss Mellen
assisted on the bench. But this time the offenders were let off
with the mere paying of court costs. The idea of freedom was
evidently spreading at last from the field of political freedom
to that of. social freedom.
Another set of cases before that old court, evidently
came as an aftermath of war. They were cases involving the
illegal sale of liquor. For some reason most of the cases seem
94.
Stories and Legends
to have originated around Kittery, though they were tried in
Biddeford. Some cases tried in October, 1789? are interesting
as revealing the way drinks were then measured, as well as how
the drinks were made. In October, 1789, a man named Lewis, ”of
Kittery, yeoman**, was tried because without a license he
'*did actually sell to one Nicholas Welks, three Bowls
- that is to say Three Quarts of mixed liquor part
of which was spiritous, wizt., three quarts of liquor
composed of Rum, water and Sugar commonly called
Toddy,'*
Another charge against the same man was that he had also sold,
without a license, "twelve mugs, that is to say twelve Quarts
of mixed liquor . commonly called Toddy.*' Thus if the
court knew its drinks and measures (and there is no doubt that
it didl) a bowl of toddy or punch legally measured a quart - and
a mug was just as big. The men of the loth Century were stout
drinkers, and not all of their drinking was associated with
inns and taverns. At the ordination of a New England minister
in 1785 it is on record "that the eighty people attending in
the morning had thirty bowls of punch before going to meeting -
and the sixty-eight who had dinner disposed of 44 bowls of
punch, 18 bottles of wine, 8 bowls of brandy, and a quantity of
cherry rum,"
The Courthouse and the Court Procession
It might be thought that thirty years of
"meeting round" would have made the York
County courts jump at the chance of a Biddeford
courthouse. But there is a suspicion that
perhaps the town of York which then had the
only courthouse (built and paid for by the
County years before) was not anxious to share
the distinction. At any rate when Jeremiah
Hill proposed that a courthouse be built here,
the County to pay only half the expense - well,
there seem to have been no loud cheers in York
when Squire Hill urged the matter in the Fall
of 1790. At that time a group of Biddeford
men, headed by Jere Hill, had subscribed forty
pounds (about $200) for the project. As court
only met for a few weeks each year, they
planned the building to be a school in the
time between courts. When the courts refused
to have the county advance half the cost - on the ground that
the Biddeford men had provided no land for the building - Squire
Hill and his associates calmly went ahead, bought land, put up
the school and in 1792 invited the courts to pay the expense of
such finishing and equipment as court use would require. In
November, 1792, with Rishworth Jordan presiding over a bench of
Biddeford
Courthouse^
and School'
1792
95.
Stories and Legends
twenty-four justices (one of whom was the good Jere Hill) the
Court of General Sessions of the Peace met in the new building.
Whether or not the county provided any money for its erection, is
not clear. In April, 1792, the justices in York had authorized
the county treasurer to pay Jere and his Biddeford associates the
sum of 60 pounds "lawful money" in three yearly installments of
20 pounds each. But for this sum the county wanted title to
the land on which the building stood - which seems to have been
rather sharp bargaining. And the fact that beginning in 1797
the court ordered paid "to Jeremiah Hill Esq., and Doctor Aaron
Porter, the sum of ten dollars in full of their account for the
use of their schoolhouse for the court at this term", would
seem to show that the county had no right of ownership. The
county also paid extra the sum of nine dollars to Daniel Hooper
"for furnishing firewood and candles at this term" (of court).
The only picture of the building that has come down
to us is the sketch made by the surveyor on the Biddeford map
of 1795 (see page 86). The drawing on page 95 is an enlargement
of that sketch. It shows a one-story building with a belfry, but
if there was a bell it was not rung for court. The colorful
parade that opened court, marched to the beat of a drum.
That court parade was not a custom peculiar to Biddeford
It was an old English custom that the colonists brought with them
to this country. And it lasted in Maine and other New England
States well into the 19th Century. But it was probably at its
most picturesque stage when the Biddeford courthouse was built.
One of the best descriptions found is that given by Neal Dow,
the Portland reformer, in his autobiography. As he was born in
l8o4. the spectacle he describes evidently dated before 1820 -
but It was still a direct survival of Colonial days. These are
his words:
"One of the interesting. . .sights with
which the youths of my day were
familiar was the ceremonies attending
the opening of court, or rather the
progress - for it was altogether too
majestic to be termed the walk - of
the judge from his tavern or boarding
house to the courthouse. At the
appointed time, the sheriff, with
several under-officers, the former
armed with a sword, the others with
staves, presented themselves at the
domicile of the judge to escort his
honor through the streets. Pending
the pleasure of the court to begin
the march, a group in which small
boys predominated always gathered
about the door, just beyond reach
of the tip of the longest official
An old-time
High Sheriff
96.
Stories and Legends
staff, which was liable without warning to tap the
head, to poke the ribs, or to drop on the toes of
some venturous urchin who approached too near the
sacred circle which was to receive the ”Jedge.'*
"When the door opened and the awful presence of the
embodied majesty of law approached, stillness fell
upon the group. The boys doffed their hats... The
sheriff would approach the judge, with his hat, a
cocked one, in hand, and ask his * worship' s' pleasure .
Then after the exchange of a few formal questions and
replies the little procession would form.
"The sheriff, with drawn sword, placed himself in the
lead, behind him two tipstaves took places, looking
more important than the sheriff himself. Then came
the judge, with a calm stern countenance. Impressing
all the boys... and older people too, I dare say, with
a deep sense of the great amount of justice, righteous¬
ness and wisdom the commonwealth had committed to his
keeping. Behind the judge in position, but not a whit
in pompousness of bearing, were two other officers
carrying staves. Then the march began its slow and
stately way to the court-house, perhaps a quarter to
half a mile distant. Behind, at a respectful distance -
no one presumed to get near enough to be by any chance
mistaken for a part of the retinue of the court -
followed men and boys. Hats... were lifted by the
townsfolk met or passed on the way to court.”
That that description applied accurately to Biddeford in 1792
is shown by a letter written in 1855 ^7 a Biddeford man and
recalling scenes he remembered as a boy in Biddeford at the close
of the loth Century. In that letter he speaks of the old court¬
house, the "ancient and honorable Court of Justice.... (with)
Seavy on top of the hill, drumming up this august body - the
High Sheriff with a drawn sword - from Esquire Hooper ' s ... the
St. Nicholas of Biddeford .. to the old School House - what a
sight for a boy of those days in Biddeford."
It must have been a picture. Rishworth Jordan, chief
justice, probably rode up (by horse or chaise) from his home on
the old Pool Road. At the Hooper Inn
he put on his robe, met the other
justices and lawyers, and v/aited for
the High Sheriff's approach. That
dignitary for 37 years was Ichabod
Goodwin whose official costume is said
to have included a staff, sword, small
clothes (knee breeches), cocked hat,
blue coat and buff vest. When the
procession formed in front of the inn,
at the foot of what is now Foss Street,
i
jJudge^Jordan' s home
"(now Stella Maris)
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the High Sheriff would place himself in front, next would be
two tipstaves, then Judge Jordan in cocked hat, wig, small
clothes and robe. Then the other judges, also in wigs and robes,
followed by the lawyers. There were then only three lawyers in
all of York County, one in Berwick and two (George Thacher and
Prentiss Mellen) in Biddeford. They also dressed in robes and
wigs to adorn the occasion. The High Sheriff was short and
portly, (he was also a Major General of militial) . Judge Rishworth
Jordan was ”a man of impressive personality, six feet in height,
broad shouldered ..and possessed of a loud, strong voice.’* And
George Thacher and Prentiss Mellen were also big, impressive men.
Thacher was nearly six feet tall and Prentiss Melleh was above
that height. As that procession marched in slow stateliness
over what is now Main Street to Emery, then wound up the Emery
Street hill almost to present Bacon Street - marched to the
solemn beat of the dr\im whose uniformed drummer stood by the
courthouse at. the top of the hill . well, the law certainly
then had a pomp and dignity and impressiveness not seen in later,
less spectacular, days.
The Arundel witchcraze
The courthouse-schoolhouse was pleasantly situated on the
hill, overlooking the river. From the memories of the old-time
schoolboy, given in that letter of 1855» we know that the
building stood near a grove of walnut trees under which the
scholars ate their dinners during recess - or tween schools**,
as it was then called. Major Samuel Jordan was the teacher,
and the school was a ’’master’s school” - a school taught by a
man, and only for older boys. * The young boys, and all girls,
were taught in ’’dame schools”, by elderly women. Education then
was pretty much a male perogative, and the saying ran: ’’All a
girl needs to know is how to make a shirt and a pudding.”
Perhaps it was partly due that sad ideal of education, that
in November of 1796 the old building was the scene of a
remarkable trial. Just a century before (in 1692) feeble old
men and women had been dragged into court to face judges who
ordered them hung - for the crime of witchcraft. That was in
Salem, Massachusetts, at the close of the 17th Century. Now,
104 years later, as the l8th Century was ending, three women
faced a bench of judges in the Biddeford courthouse - and the
case involved the old fear of witchcraft. But there was this
important difference. In Salem, in 1692, it was the alleged
witches who had been on trial - and the judges themselves
believed in witchcraft. In Biddeford, on the contrary, in 1796
it was the people who had accused an old woman of witchcraft
who were on trial - and nothing is clearer than that the judges
in Biddeford had no belief in witchcraft. It makes that
Biddeford trial an illuminating measure of the progress of a
century. There were still pools of ignorance among the people.
98.
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The strange ”hex” cases of Pennsylvania a few years ago, show
that there are still such pools - and not just in New England.
But the judges of the Court of General Sessions of the Peace,
in Biddeford in 1796, with Judge Rishv/crth Jordan and Squire
Benjamin Hooper among them on the bench, refused to listen to
any justification of witchcraft and roundly lectured the witch-
hunters, for ignorance.
The case did not involve any resident of Biddeford. It
arose in the neighboring town of Arundel - probably among the
fisher folk of Cape Porpoise. The old court record runs:
"The Commonwealth of Massachusetts against Elizabeth
Smith, wife of Daniel Smith; Dolly Smith, singlewoman;
and Sarah Hilton, wife of John Hilton - all of
Arundel in the County of York, Defendants upon an
indictment of the Grand Jury found against them, and
one Molly Hilton, singlewoman, at this term, in
substance as follows:
"That the said Elizabeth, Dolly, Molly and
Sarah, on the fifteenth day of October
last past, with force and arms at Arundel
aforesaid, in and upon one Elizabeth Smith
of -Arundel aforbsaid-; widdw^^ in the pe^cd 6f
God and this Commonwealth then and there
being, did make an assault, and her the said
Elizabeth Smith, widow, did beat, wound and
ill treat, whereby her life was much in
danger, and other wrongs to her then and
there did to the great damage of the said
Elizabeth Smith, widow, and against the law
and the peace of the Commonwealth aforesaid
and the dignity of the same."
The story concealed in that legal bad English can luckily
be translated and amplified by a report of the trial which
was printed in "The Courier and General Advertiser", an old
newspaper of Boston. The report is dated November 17 and was
evidently viTitten by a Portland man who had attended the Biddeford
trial. It gives a measure of the leisureliness of news in those
days, to know that the trial was held around November 10th, was
reported from Portland a week later (November 1?) and was printed
in Boston on December 8. And this is the report:
"In the course of the trial it appeared that in
the month of October last, (Elizabeth Smith,
widow) had been accused of Witchcraft; and that
not only her neighbours, but her relations had
been so incensed against herthat she was obliged
to fly to a neighboring town for safety.
"It seems that one John Hilton had, sometime in
. 99.
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October, become insane; and while in that state
had accused the Complainant (Elizabeth Smith, widow)
of having bewitched him. He said that as he was
going home one evening, just
before dark, the Complainant
appeared before him and walked
- _ _ _ _a. _ _J _ _ i.'sT’lLiii'
the blow gave him great pain etc.
"Eaton Cleaves, witness on behalf of the defendants,
further testified that till the time mentioned by
Hilton, he had been possessed of a sound mind; that
while he then declared the Complainant bewitched him,
and had ever since continued to declare it. That the
Complainant had been requested to visit Hilton, and
that while she was in the house he appeared to be much
better, and talked very rationally; that it was
proposed to obtain some of her blood as an antidote,
and that she consented her blood should be shed. But
notwithstanding all this, it appeared in evidence
that the defendants (Elizabeth, Dolly, Molly and
Sarah) had threatened her life, had said that she
ought to have been long ago in hell with the damned;
and that they would let loose the man whom she had
bewitched, John Hilton, to kill her. Whether they let
him loose or not is uncertain; but it is a fact that
he made his escape from the place where he was confined
and ran immediately to the house of the Complainant,
beat her violently with a stick, drove her out of the
house, then seized her by the throat and well nigh
choaked her. While Hilton was striking and choaking
her, one of the defendants, and niece to Hilton, cried
out 'Kill her. Uncle John,' It appeared also in the
course of the trial that other means had been used to
kill her besides calling on 'Uncle John.' The
defendants had, to use their own expression, 'tried
projects' . This not having the desired effect. Uncle
John went in person.
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Stories and Legends
"Many circumstances given in evidence were calculated
to provoke laughter. But at the close of the trial
the subject assumed a very serious aspect. The
delusion appeared to be general, and the ignorance of
the people profound. While the Court were sitting,
news was received that on account of the trial in
question, a house had been entirely demolished in the
neighborhood of the Complainant. His honor. Judge
Wells, in an address to the defendants, endeavored to
convince them of the gross error into which they had
fallen; and that the difficulties and dissentions
among them arose rather from ignorance in themselves
than from witchcraft in the poor old woman."
That report of 1796 is remarkably modern in its viewpoint,
but the name of the reporter is not known. It might have been
a lawyer "riding circuit", and writing back to Boston. Some of
the details he singled out are amazing - such as that of the
pathetic old widow, Elizabeth Smith, so afraid that she might be
somehow exerting an evil influence that "she consented her
blood should be shed" as an "antidote.” But the essential
thing, the historical measure of advance, is in the attitude of
that bench of judges for whom Justice Wells spoke. In Salem,
in 1692, it was the judges who were convinced of the existence
of witchcraft, and tried to convince the old men and women of
guilt to merit hanging. But in Biddeford, in 1796, the judges
attacked the ignorance of the old widow* s accusers and refused
to accept their accusations as excuse for their actions. In
1692 the judges who should have been the leaders of the people,
in intelligence, actually only led them into insane error. In
Biddeford, in 1796, the judges took their proper role.
The old court record concludes:
"After the cause is opened to the Jury, the Court
recommend to the Attorney for the Commonwealth that
in case the defendants will recognize the Coimnon-
wealth in (the sum of) one humdred dollars each for
their personal appearance at next term, and in the
meantime to keep the Peace and be of good behavior
towards all the good citizens of this Commonwealth,
more especially toward the said Elizabeth Smith,
widow: to enter a nolo prosequi on said indictment...
. . .Whereupon it is considered by the Court that the
said Elizabeth, Dolly, and Sarah be discharged and
go thereof without day." •
That was the way of sanity and intelligence, made clear in the
Biddeford courthouse on the hill above the river, by the judges
of Biddeford - to those sadly uneducated, superstitious women
of Arundel. Biddeford can be proud of its l8th Century judges.
When that case was tried, George Washington was nearing the end
of his Presidency. And John Adams, old friend of Biddeford, had
just been elected as second President of the United States.
101.
Stories and Legends
The Heresy Trial of Jere Hill
Another story that George Folsom must have known, but
failed to tell in his History, was the strange trial for heresy
that was tried in the old Pool Road church on Thursday, May 2,
1793* But the story is worth telling, and needs to be told.
Because it, too, like the trial of the Arundel women, is a
measure of change and progress as the l8th Century closed.
When President Roosevelt, in January, 19^1 » put into words
what he called ”the Four Freedoms”, his second - ”freedom of
every person to worship God in his own way” - exactly reflected
the struggle that was going on in Biddeford 150 years before.
Up to the close of the l8th Century there was but one church in
the town. It was the official church, the salary of its minister
was fixed in town meeting and paid by a special town tax. V/hen
in 1739 a group of Presbyterians (the famous Scotch-Irish who had
settled here in 1718. and brought with them the white potato and
the art of weaving linen) asked to be relieved from paying that
tax (so that they could support a church and minister of their
own) the request was sternly voted down. But now, fifty years
later, all over New England intelligent men and women were
beginning to find this town church monopoly too hidebound, too
cramping to the ideals of liberty that were slowly spreading
out from the American Revolution as ripples spread from the
center of a pool to its rim - growing ever wider.
And, as usual in all profound movements, there were other
things mixed in. The struggle in the church in Biddeford also
reflected the growing feeling between Lower Biddeford and the
Falls village (see page 8l) . Jeremiah Hill, the accused in the
trial of 1793) was particularly identified with the Falls village.
His home, which Folsom calls a ‘‘mansion”, stood on what is now
Peirson‘s Lane on the site of the old Phillip's Garrison House
that had been burned by the Indians in 1675* Jere Hill, as he
always signed himself, was Biddeford* s man of progress. As has
■just been told, he was the active spirit behind the building of
Biddeford 's first school and courthouse. At the time of the
heresy trial he was Town Treasurer and a Justice of the Court of
General Sessions of the Peace. He had been 28 years of age
when the Revolution began and had personally enlisted a
company, of which he was captain, that he had led for three years
and through the great victory of Saratoga. He had also been
an adjutant general in the Bagaduce expedition of 1779 • Finally
he was the friend and associate of the new men who had come to
Biddeford after or during the Revolution - Dr. Aaron Porter in
1773) George Thacher in 1782, Prentiss Mellen in 1792 - and who
were giving the Falls village what was perhaps the most brilliant
period of its history. In attacking Jere Hill, old Deacon Simon
Wingate, the accuser, was undoubtedly attacking everything that
then stood for real aistinction and progress in Biddeford. It
was fortunate that Jere Hill was a man of deep convictions and
102.
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Stories end Legends
courage. He met the attack boldly, he met it **head on.” The
cantankerous old Deacon, Jere’s own uncle, utterly failed in his
apparent attempt to bring Jere ’'down a peg” - or to crush the
spirit of progress and tolerance in Biddeford.
cp Christ
( N
Bi DDE ford
MaV 2, lf9S‘
of cu nxin a)>f> roved' of CoJcir
Peter,
“ T/i^y recei’i/^dlhe. U^re/ u^lth ^li <f mm
aneffearchtd ihe jenpiur^s ouhelher 1^o1e
ihln^ ujqrefo ” Pd vU
J
Title page of pamphlet now in
the John Carter Brown Library,
in Providence, Rhode Island.
A very rare old pamphlet of twenty-four pages and about
8,000 words, is the only record yet found of that trial. From
internal evidence it seems to have been written and published
by Jeremiah Hill himself and, if so, shows the man to have
103.
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.eol
Stories and Legends
been a close and reverent student of the Bible. In fact, the first
point that he insisted on in his defense was **That the Scriptures
are true.” He was what we would call today a Unitarian, while
old Deacon Wingate was (to judge from the old pamphlet) a bitterly
intolerant Trinitarian. It is hard to realize today how seriously
such differences were then taken. This Biddeford case is very
significant in history as one of the first (if not actually the
first) expressions of a struggle that in the next thirty or forty
years was to convulse all of New England. So bitter and bigoted
was the feeling against the Unitarians that there is record of
an actual case in which (thirty years or more after the Biddeford
trial) a Massachusetts judge refused to admit the testimony of
a witness in a law case, because said witness ”was a Unitarian
and therefore a man incapable of telling the truth.” V/hich shows
clearly enough that Deacon Simon Wingate was not something just
peculiar to .Biddeford.
But what interests us today are the personalities involved in
that trial, and the results that came from it. The old pamphlet
minces no words on the subject of Deacon Wingate. Its beginning
is quoted to give its style, and as a picture of the times:
”Kind Reader,
Before I proceed, it will be necessary to give you
the clue which led to this business. Simon Wingate,
one of the deacons of the Church in Biddeford, a rigid
Trinitarian, and a man of a violent temper, had for
many years been endeavoring to stir up a church quarrel
with Mr. Hill, on account of his catholic ideas which
he in conversation held up to view when religion was
the topic, influenced the Rev. Mr. Webster, pastor of
said church, to invite him and Mr. Hill to meet at his
house and at the same time to invite a number of the
church to be present. (Mr. Hill had for a number of
years carefully avoided any conversation with Deacon
Wingate respecting religion, on account of his rigid
principles and violent temper.)
a
” Accordingly they met at the Pastor's on Friday, the
l4th day of September, 1792, and four other members of
said Church . After a considerable conversation
respecting various texts of Scripture..., Deacon'
Wingate finding those present wished to drop the
matter, expressed himself after this manner, "If you
are all satisfied, I shall endeavor to make myself
contented” - and each one returned to his respective
home. The next sabbath. Deacon Wingate did not attend
meeting and it was currently reported that he exclaimed
bitterly against the Pastor and Church, calling them
as much heretics as Mr. Hill, and that he was
conscience-smitten and could not or would not worship
with them.”
104.
I
i i
’ ■
Stories and Legends
The Deacon's talk, it seems, badly upset a fellow deacon -
Deacon James Emery, a first cousin to Jere Hill. From James
Emery, old Wingate managed to secure a letter written by Jere and
then travelled to Scarboro where the minister of that town,
"filled with enthusiastic zeal", read Jere’s honest letter and
"passed solemn sentence of condemnation upon it, calling it
heresy, blasphemy, damnable doctrine, etc." With that reinforce¬
ment, old Wingate scurried back home and in January, 1793) filed
a formal charge of heresy against Hill, his own nephew^ The
Deacon had married Lydia Hill, sister of Jere Hill’s father, in
1736 - which was eleven years before Jere, the Deacon’s nephew,
was born. It was a plain case of an older generation fighting
against the ideas of a younger generation.
Deacon Wingate’s charge brought abotiit a call for a special
church meeting, but the date was set ahead four months - to May
of 1793 - to give Jere time to prepare his defense. In the
meantime Jere boldly brought counter charges against the Deacon,
and they make interesting reading. Specifically he charged the
Deacon
"With absenting himself from the social worship and
communion of the Church for six months last past...
For his imchristian conduct towards those who did
not construe the sacred Scriptures agreeable to his
notion...
For being a raller, a tattler, and a busybody in
other men's matters, contrary to the precepts and
example of Jesus Christ ...
For combining with others to defraud one David
Hutchins in the sale of some iron-ore mines...
For persecuting him for a private pique under the
cloak of religion..."
The pamphlet further explains:
"Mr. Hill always supposed that Deacon Wingate carried
on this matter out of revenge, because he enlisted
his (the Deacon's) apprentice during the late war,
contrary to his (the Deacon’s) will, though his
personal interest did not suffer by it, for the
apprentice gave him (Deacon Wingate) one hundred
dollars of his bounty. On this account the Deacon
often quarrelled with Mr. Hill, and finding he could
not get any advantage by quarrelling in that way, he
commenced the combat under the cloak of religion.
Besides, Deacon Wingate was jealous that Mr. Hill
assisted Mr. Hutchins in his law-suit against him
concerning the iron-ore mines, for Mr. Hill as a
Justice of the Peace took a number of depositions
to be used in that action on both sides, and when
Deacon Wingate came to him for his advice respecting
the matter, he candidly gave him his opinion and the
105.
Stories and Legends
reasons why he formed such an opinion, which offended
the Deacon - though the judgment of the court of
reference proved to be the same."
That, of course, is just one side of the story. But such reasons
have caused such actions as the Deacon’s many, many times in
history.
So the trial of Jere Hill was held in the old Pool Road
church on a Wednesday in May, 1793* It seems to have been an
all-day meeting, the first part being taken up with a gathering
of ministers from all over the County. Then the church members
convened and the minister of the town of Wells presided while
Jere Hill rose and eloquently (and boldly) defended his beliefs,
and his right to them. His spirit comes out in the very first
paragraph of his defense, as quoted in the old pamphlet;
"Friends, Brethern & Fellow-Citizens:
I think myself happy that I am permitted this day
to answer for myself before this assembly, touching
the things whereof I am accused, because I know that
this is an age of free inquiry; and I desire to thank
• my God, that by the constitution of this Commonwealth,
’No subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in
his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping God
in the manner and season most agreeable to the
dictates of his own conscience; or for his religious
profession or sentiments; provided he doth not disturb
the public peace or obstruct others in their religious
worship. *
Therefore I beseech you to hear me patiently."
It is to the credit of Biddeford that Jere Hill was heard
patiently that day. And that no verdict of heresy or loss of
church membership was passed against him. The Deacon ^ent out
of history at the end of that trial, with his baffled venom
and bigotry still choking him. Within three years, Jere Hill,
Squire Benjamin Hooper, Edmund Perkins (the shipbuilder), Samuel
Peirson, and fifty-six other men of the Falls village had
organized what the old town records call "the catholic Christian
Society" that under the formal title of the "Second Religious
Society" was incorporated in June of 1797 and built the first
church in Upper Biddeford on the Crescent Street site now
occupied by the White Church. Immediately after the
incorporation they were joined by George Thacher (who is said to
haye been a leader in the whole movement, with Jere Hill) and
the number, standing and influence of those men explains the
fact that as early as March of 1797 a vote was passed that town
meetings would thereafter be held alternately in the new church
In the village, and. the old church en the Pool Road. Jere Hill
had fought in the Revolution, for political freedom. In 1793 be
fought (and won) the battle for freedom of worship, in Biddeford.
106.
1
Stories and Legends
An Afterword
In June of 1799 > a boy was born in Biddeford within
sound of the great Falls. He was born in his father’s
house on Dean’s Hill, just across the street from the old
inn of Squire Hooper who died before the boy was three
years old. Thus he seems to have had no memory of ’’the
St. Nicholas of Biddeford”, but it is clear that he never
forgot the Falls. He probably was taken to see them,
from the vantage point of the Biddeford riverbank some
distance behind the Hooper inn. Or the Falls could then
have been seen clearly from the top floor of the boy’s
home on Dean’s Hill.
The boy was Grenville Mellen, son of the lawyer,
Prentiss Mellen, who was later Maine’s first Chief
Justice. Grenville was also educated for the law, but
in manhood became better known as one of Maine’s earliest
poets. Although the family left Biddeford when Grenville
was only six, he twice wrote of Biddeford in his later
life - which ended at the early age of 4l, The following
quotations make a pleasant picture of Biddeford, just
after the close of the l8th Century. For these quotations
we are indebted to Brother Alban, of the St. Louis High
School faculty, who discovered them during research in
Maine poetry.
Grenville Mellen’ s first reference to Biddeford is
brief - but it does not fail to mention the Falls:
•’Well, I was born in Biddeford - and left
That place when I was six years old - and thus
Was of its sunshine, and its Falls bereftl”
The second is more descriptive:
”I first saw light in Biddeford - a spot
.Where roses bloom no fairer than elsewhere;
; Yet ’tis a fact - when Earth from chaos shot
She cooled into strange form and pressure there.
It was not fam’d for making of Morrocco -
It has no steeple in’ t - and stands upon the Saco
1
107.
Stories and Legends
There Is a bridge, which straddles o'er the tide
In lofty grandeur - and the floating waves
Pouring tumultuous in their torrent wide,
Roar on the might below - and yet it braves
The deaf'ning vengeance of the billowy floods;
'Tis made of best pitch-pine - Good Lordl how
long it stood.
As I was saying - I was born in Biddeford -
And learned to spell of women pedagogues -
This spireless town no Eton did afford;
*Twas made for saw-mills - to get rid of logs'.
For *tis a woody country - and they fell
So many cloud-bath' d trees - I would not dare
to telll"
T 4 <2 /' a I /j> af If I /o rd
108
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